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land, has been changed from being an open field or pasture, in 

 this county, Avithin the period of my remembrance, which now 

 extends to sixty years, by any deliberate design, planting or 

 cultivation ; and I am hardly aware that an acre has been cut 

 down, cleared, and made a cultivated field or pasture, within 

 that time. But within the last forty years, hundreds of acres 

 have been overrun by the spontaneous growth of forest trees ! 



In the town of Groveland, it is easy now to show large 

 tracts, over which men now living have held the plough, and 

 swung the scythe and sickle, from which may now be cut from 

 thirty to forty cords of wood to the acre ; and by this growth, 

 and the multiplication of fruit and ornamental trees, our 

 landscape now presents a much more wooded prospect than it 

 did forty years ago. 



One cause of this great change is the neglect of agriculture, 

 and confining it to fewer acres, since the prevalence of manu- 

 factures ; another is, the now almost universal use of mineral 

 coal. Most of this increase is the various species of pine. 



White pine is a tree of very rapid growth ; and I can now 

 cut a frame for a good sized house, from land fi'om which the 

 previous owner cut nearly all the wood which he considered 

 worth cutting in 1838. What were then small trees, of a few 

 feet in height, are now timber. The pine is a very sure and 

 thrifty seedling, and I might now claim your premium for a 

 thousand trees of not less than three years old, all seedlings, 

 and in a most thrifty state — and all growing spontaneously on 

 what was, twelve years ago, chiefly an oak forest. The pine, 

 I believe, never starts from the roots of an old tree, but are in 

 all cases seedlings. 



The oak seedling is of slow growth ; but still they are con- 

 stantly renewing from the acorn, in woods of thin growth, and 

 around the margin of oak forests — the leaves afibrding them a 

 sufficient covering, and the surrounding trees a sufficient shel- 

 ter from the driving winds and snow ; but the most thrifty 

 growth of oak, maple and birch, are from the roots of previous 

 trees, cut down before the life of both root and branches is 



