NEW EiNGLAND FARMER. 



303 



years from 'the time of planting, would amply pay 

 for the land at the price it'would have brought." 



Mr. S. Brown, in a communication to the l?nston 

 Cultivator, says, " I have one acre of land which, 

 thirty years ago, was not worth more than ten dol- 

 lars ; I have no recollection of there beini>' a tree 

 upon it, with the exception of one apple-tree, and 

 some scattering bushes; the appearance of the soil 

 ^^■as .such as to forbid any attempt at cultivation, and 

 ray cattle have rambled over it from that day to this ; 

 in the mean time, the young pines voluntary sprung 

 up, and became a forest ; and now, I would not thank 

 any man to pay me sixty dollars for the standing wood 

 on that acre. Now, if any man can tell me how to 

 improve such land to better advantage, I would thank 

 him for the information." 



Mr. Webster has a great variety of thrifty, promis- 

 ing young forest-trees on his' estate at Marshtiold, 

 which he has raised by planting the seeds. There 

 are several reasons for preferring this mode of cultiva- 

 tion to that of transplanting. The expense of plant- 

 ing seed is less than that of transplanting trees ; the 

 trees will be straighter and more vigorous ; they 

 neither require staking nor watering ; and at the end 

 of eight or ten years they will ordinarily have ac- 

 quired a much larger growth than trees transplanted 

 at the same time. 



The sxiecess in attempting improvements by plant- 

 ing waste or exhausted lands to wood and timber, 

 will verj' much depend upon choosing those kinds of 

 trees that are most naturally adapted to the soil. 

 Professor Johnston has some very interesting remarks 

 upon this point, a part of which I will venture to 

 quote. Speaking of the improvements going on in 

 Europe, in renovating exhausted lands by planting 

 trees, he saj-s, — 



"The most precise observations on the subject 

 with which I am acquainted, are those which have 

 been made in the extensive plantations of the late 

 duke of Athol. These plantations consist chiefly of 

 white larch, and grow upon a poor, hilly soil, resting 

 on gneiss, mica-slate and clay-slate. In six or seven 

 years, the lower branches spread out, become inter- 

 laced, and completely overshadow the ground. Noth- 

 ing, therefore, grows upon it till the trees are twenty- 

 four years old, when the spines of the lower branch- 

 es, beginning to fall, the first considerable thinning 

 takes place. Air and light being thus readmitted, 

 grasses spring up, and a tine sward is graduall)' pro- 

 duced. The ground, which previously was worth 

 only nine pence or one shilling [rent ?] per acre as a 

 sheep pasture, at the end *of thirty years becomes 

 worth from seven shillings to ten shillings per acre. 



" On the soil planted by the duke of Athol, the 

 larch shot up luxuriantly, while the "Scotch fir lin- 

 gered and languished in its growth. Thus the quan- 

 tity of leaves produced and annually shed by the 

 former was vastly greater than by the latter tree. 

 Had the Scotch fir thriven better than the larch, the 

 reverse might have been the case, and the value of 

 the soil might have been increased in a greater pro- 

 portion by plantations of the former tree. 



" In regard to the relative improving power of the 

 several species of trees, the most rational, natural 

 rule, by which our practice should be guided, seems 

 to be contained in these three propositions : — 



1. That the soil will be most improved by those 

 trees which thrive best iipon it ; 



2. Among those which thrive equally, by such as 

 yield the largest produce of leaves ; and, 



3. Among such as yield an equal weight of leaves, 

 by those whose leaves contain the largest proportion 

 of inorganic matter — which bring up from beneath, 

 that is, and spread over the surface in largest quan- 

 tity, the materials of a fertile soil. 



"The mode in which the lower branches of the 

 larch spread out and overshadow the surface is not 

 without its iniiuence upon the ultimate improvement 



which the soil exhibits. All vegetation being pre- 

 vented, the land, besides receiving a yearly manure 

 of vegetable mould, is made to lie for upwards of 

 twenty years in uninterrupted naked fallow. It is 

 sheltered also from the beating of the rain-drops, 

 which descend slowly and gently upon it, bearing 

 principles of fertility, instead of washing out the 

 valuable saline substances it may contain. Beneath 

 the overshadowing branches of a forest, the soil is 

 also protected from the wind ; and to this jirotection 

 Sprengel attributes much of that rapid improvement 

 so generally experienced where lands are covered 

 with wood. The winds bear along particles of earthy 

 matter, which they deposit again in the still forests ; 

 and tbus gradually form a soil even on the most 

 naked places." 



Thousands of acres of waste lands in New England, 

 entirely unprofitable to the owners and to community, 

 might, by judicious planting with trees, bo redeemed 

 from their sterility, — thus adding, in effect, to the 

 territorial extent as well as wealth of the country ; 

 besides in many cases tivefolding the value of indi- 

 vidual estates thus planted. Numerous instances 

 might be given in proof of this statement. 



It is worth J' of separate and particular consideration 

 that our country is fast becoming penetrated in every 

 direction by railroads, whose consumption of wood is 

 so enormous that we must look well to our forests, 

 or they will vanish. The facilities of transportation 

 which they afford will induce a greater demand for 

 lumber and stuff for turning purposes, for the man- 

 ufactories near the sea-board. Thus new and greater 

 inducements for the cultivatiom and preservation of 

 woodlands are yearly becoming developed, urging our 

 farmers to awake to the importance of this subject. 



In treating this topic at this time, I have chosen 

 to give a somewhat desultory statement and citation 

 of facts and principles which are so palpable as to 

 come within the observation of every one, rather 

 than a methodical and formal essay ; hoping by this 

 means the more surely to attract the attention of the 

 practical farmer. 



F. HOLBROOK. 



Bkattleboro', Vt., Feb. 1849. 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



Of all modern sciences, the science of the globe has 

 made the most rapid, the most remarkable, and the 

 most important progress. Bacon makes the fine re- 

 mark, that while the works of man advance by suc- 

 cessive additions, the works of nature all go on at 

 once ; thus the machinist adds wheel to wheel, and 

 spring to spring, but the earth produces the tree, 

 branch and bark, trunk and leaf, together. There is 

 something analogous to this combined operation in 

 physical geography : a whole crowd of remarkable 

 discoveries seem to have burst on us at once, ex- 

 pressly designed to invigorate and impel our progress 

 in geographical science. Thus our century has wit- 

 nessed new phenomena of magnetism, new laws of 

 heat and refrigeration, new laws even of the tempest, 

 new rules of the tides, new expedients for the pres- 

 ervation of health at sea, new arrangements for the 

 supplv of fresh food, and even for the supply of fresh 

 water'by distillation, and all tending to the same ob- 

 ject — the knowledge of the globe. 



The use of steam, to which modern mechanism has 

 given almost a new existence, and certamly a new 

 power — the conquest of wind and wave by the 

 steam ship, and the almost miraculous saving of time 

 and space by the steam carriage ; the new necessity 

 of remote enterprise, originating in the urgency of 

 commercial and manufacturing difficulties ; the 

 opening of the thousand islands of the Indian Archi- 

 pelago, till now known to us as scarcely more than 

 the seat of savage life, or the scene of Oriental fable ; 



