No. 4.] TIMBER AS A CHOP. 25 



with this rainfall and sunshine, produce a magnificent crop 

 of timber. 



Speaking from my own experience, I will give a small 

 example. In 1870 I bought an abandoned farm. Some 

 one, two or three years afterward I noticed a clump of 

 sapling white pines upon it. I had no recollection that I 

 had ever seen them before. It covered one hundred a'nd 

 eight square rods of land. I could not have sold that acre 

 of land, including those pines, — and they were right beside 

 the road, — at that time, probably, if I had advertised it 

 throughout the section for a dollar, to any man living. 

 After I noticed them I asked a friend of mine if he did not 

 want some bean poles, fence stakes, etc. He had enough of 

 his own farther away, but concluded to take mine for the 

 cutting. I showed hirii how I wanted him to thin out the 

 trees. Told him to pay no attention to the body but to the 

 head of the tree, and leave only those which had a fair-sized 

 head and a single stem running right straight towards the 

 heavens. I was there the next year, and found that he had 

 thinned them out just as well as I could. I did not see 

 those trees again for live or seven years. Then I found I 

 had neglected them too loni^. The trees had o-rown faster 

 than I expected, and you have little meaner land in Massa- 

 chusetts than that is. I found that the trees were too 

 crowded. Pine trees grow rapidly in proportion to their 

 leaves. I asked him to thin them out again. He has 

 thinned them from that time to this, and I presume he has 

 cut out nearly as many cords of wood as the trees now 

 standing contain. He has not only shingled his own 

 buildings but many of the neighboring ones, and has built 

 two stables in the village, mostly out of timber cut from 

 that lot. I have been there two successive years to measure 

 these trees. Mr. Carey, an agent of Mr. Fernow, chief of 

 the United States Forestry Bureau, and I, measured them 

 on the twenty-third day of June, 1894, and I measured 

 them on the twenty-third day of June, 189G. I find that 

 they are gi'owiug at the rate of over two thousand feet of 

 inch boards yearly, by the acre. I cut two carefully 

 selected trees, so as to get the average size, and had them 

 sawed with a common thick circular saw, — one of those 



