ESSEX AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 117 



corn or potatoes. A light dressing of manure, ashes, or lime, 

 should be laid on, and ploughed or harrowed into the soil. 

 This being done, the land is ready to receive the seed, which 

 may be sown as soon as gathered from the trees, or kept in dry 

 sand until spring, if the field is likely to be infested with mice 

 or squirrels. To allow for this, and failures in seed, we recom- 

 mend planting five or six acorns in a circular form, just as one 

 would plant corn or potatoes in hills, making the diameter of 

 the circle at least one foot — the spaces or hills being three or 

 four feet apart ; and the work is done, for the present, so far as 

 the future oaks are concerned. It seems to be generally con- 

 ceded, however, that oaks do better, if sheltered by other small 

 trees, set out or sown before the acorns are planted. In Eng- 

 land, the Scotch fir, resembling our pitch pine, and the Scotch 

 larch, are used. We do not attach quite so much importance 

 to this auxiliary planting, as seems to be given to it in England, 

 though it is of advantage, without doubt, as sheltering the 

 young plants. We think the planter will find great advantage 

 in sowing broadcast the birch seed, at the rate of two quarts to 

 the acre, after ploughing, and before harrowing, as it is a quick 

 grower, readily removed, and of value when it becomes neces- 

 sary to make severe thinnings — and we are satisfied that this 

 is sufficient. If the planter wishes to make a mixed plantation 

 of oaks, pines, birch, ash, and maple, he can sow them all 

 broadcast, and harrow them in, except the acorn, which, if it is 

 to remain as the principal crop, had better be planted as before 

 directed. We have thus given, in a cursory manner, the most 

 proper mode, in our opinion, to secure a profitable return to the 

 forest planter. We have adopted, out of many plans that 

 planters follow, the one, which, upon the whole, seems best 

 adapted to us, and it has this advantage, if the assertion, by 

 some writers, be true, that a transplanted tree makes less valu- 

 ble timber, that the trees start up, grow, and mature, without 

 transplanting. It may be, however, that a farmer cannot, in 

 any one or two seasons, get his field ready for planting, and, at 

 the same time, he is unwilling to lose the intervening time, en- 

 tirely. In such a case, he has only to sow his acorns in a small 

 bed of good soil in the autumn, and allow them to remain there 



