No. 4.] TIMBER AS A CROP. 31 



advise you to sow them early, for fear they would not keep 

 well. 



One thing more, and very important, — you must have 

 your trees come up thick. If they come up far apart, they 

 will l)c too branching and of little value. You want the low 

 limbs to be very small, and the only way to have them small 

 is to have the trees come up very close together, I should 

 say not less than three thousand to an acre, and I would 

 rather have six thousand. You want to begin early to thin 

 them out, because the tree will not grow unless it has space. 

 Thin not too much at a time, but often, and select your 

 standards and thin about the standards so as to keep them 

 growing. On my dry ground I intend to keep the live tops 

 large enough so that the trees intended for good-sized mill 

 logs will gain two inches in diameter in five 3^ears. The 

 growth of a tree will depend on the size of its live top. You 

 can cut off the dry limbs as they die, and sometimes a few 

 green ones. I found by experiment that it would cost about 

 one and one-half cents a tree to trim them up tq twenty 

 feet from the ground. You can see at once, if the limbs are 

 cut up twenty feet, by the time the tree is three inches in 

 diameter you could have large logs entirely free from knots 

 to within one and one-half inches of the heart. At the butt 

 of the tree you can cut all these limbs when the knots are 

 very small. 



If you are going to grow luml)er of good size, why not 

 grow valuable lumber? I intend, when my little pines are 

 grown, that the lumber will bring the highest market price. 

 Passing through our village the other day, I asked the price 

 of pine luml)er. One gentleman told me that he was deliv- 

 ering inch box boards at Haverhill, Mass., at nine dollars a 

 thousand. I came along to a planing mill, and asked what 

 their pine boards were worth. " About ten dollars a thou- 

 sand." At another place I asked, "What is that lumber 

 worth?" " Twenty-four dollars a thousand." I came along 

 to a carpenter and asked what his lumber was worth. " Sixty 

 dollars a thousand." All [)ine lumber, l)ut of different qual- 

 ities. You can grow the valuable lumber by a little care. 

 The same principle of care extends through all departments. 

 The red knots of live limbs arc fast. You cannot knock 



