1862. 



NEW ENGLAND FARjVIER. 



299 



For the JSeic England Farmer. 

 BOTATION IN" FORESTS. 



Messrs. Editors : — Stupidity must rule in the 

 cranium of the man that does not feel a degree of 

 enthusiasm, or an elevated reverence for that Be- 

 ing who administers the laws of nature, as demon- 

 strated to the sight of every farmer who has eyes 

 to behold "God's handiworks." Every man who 

 has seen half a century or more, and has spent all 

 or part of his days in the country, in the neigh- 

 borhood of forests, and has be^n a careful obser- 

 ver of the progress and productions of nature, 

 has seen a succession of the diflerent species of 

 forest trees, or the varieties of the same species 

 succeed each other on the same tract of land, 

 without man's aid or interference. When the first 

 settlers took possession of the soil which we now 

 occupy, they found it in some places covered witli 

 the different kinds of oak, and other hard wood, 

 and in other places with the pine varieties, or oth- 

 er evergreens. After the removal of the original 

 growth of hard wood, I have found it succeeded 

 by evergreens. If evergreens composed the orig- 

 inal growth, it was succeeded by some of the va- 

 rieties of hard wood, or of a different variety of 

 the evergreen from the original growth. 



In the State of Maine, I have seen, on the re- 

 moval of a heavy growth of beech, birch and ma- 

 ple, dense crops of hemlocks springing up, and in 

 my own neighborhood, on chopping off an oak 

 growth, a pitch pine one has succeeded, and on 

 cutting that off, white pines have sprung up in 

 multitudes. Every kind of soil has a constant 

 tendency to production ; even our most grain- 

 worn fields, on suffering them to lie without crop- 

 ping, are soon filled with young pines, which 

 spring up in such numbers as to surprise us. The 

 Almighty formed the soil for activity, as well as 

 the animals which inhabit it, and its being destitute 

 of the fertilizing power which produces grain, is 

 no hindrance to the growth of the pine varieties. 



The above remarks suggest that every vegeta- 

 ble, and every distinct species of tree, with all 

 their varieties, flourish in consequence of a sj^ecifie 

 fertilizing principle imbibed from the earth by a 

 peculiar set of absorbent vessels adapted to the 

 nature and wants of each, which cause their grad- 

 ual growth and ultimate maturity. On the ex- 

 haustion of the nutriment which produces one dis- 

 tinct species of vegetable, or tree, the nutritive 

 principle which is required for the growth of other 

 species is left unimpaired in the soil, to be applied 

 when called for by others, and the earth, while in 

 the progress of exhaustion by the production of 

 one species of trees, or other vegetal)les, is accu- 

 mulating a supply of nutrition which will be re- 

 quired by trees and vegetables of other species to 

 promote their growth. The nourishing, elemen- 

 tary principle which produces the hard wood va- 

 rieties, has no affinitv for the evergreens, and. 

 therefore, the evergreens will flourish after the 

 hard wood is done growing, in consequence of the 

 soil being exhausted of that element v.hich pro- 

 duced it, and so one variety of evergreens will 

 succeed another for the same cause. 



We frequently hear complaints of the "running 

 out," as it is called, of many kinds of vegetables, 

 and the deterioration is supposed to be owing to 

 a degeneracy of the seeds sown, M'hen, in fact, it 

 is caused by the want of the knowledge of rota- 



tion, and putting this knowledge into practice. 

 We are taught the doctrine of rotation by nature 

 herself, in the arrangement which she makes in 

 the natural forests, if we would but observe her 

 laws. All vegetables exhaust the soil in propor- 

 tion to the nourishment which they afford. Oats, 

 which are so nourishing to horses, exhaust the 

 soil more than any root crop with which I am ac- 

 quainted. I have seen four or five good crops of 

 corn and rye grow upon pine plains, in succession, 

 without manure, where a heavy growth of wood 

 had been recently cut off, and but little brush left 

 on the ground to make ashes, which is evidence 

 sufficient to convince us that the same kind of 

 food which feeds the forest, is not the favorite of 

 the various kinds of grain. Thus it seems that 

 every kind of vegetable extracts some peculiar 

 principle of nutrition from the earth congenial to 

 its own wants, and differing from that required by 

 others, and this accounts for the necessity of ro- 

 tation in raising our crops, if we would wish to 

 realize the greatest ]n'ofit from our labor. 

 Wilmington, 1862. Silas Brown. 



"WHITE-WASHING EXTRAOBDINAIfSr. 



The Rev. James Williams, the well-known and 

 philanthropic missionary, so long resident in the 

 South Sea Islands, taught the natives to manufac- 

 ture lime from the coral of their shores. The 

 powerful effect produced upon them, and the ex- 

 traordinary uses to which they applied it, he thus 

 facetiously describes : 



"After having laughed at the process of burn- 

 ing, which they believed to be to cook the coral 

 for their food, what was their astonishment, when 

 in the morning they found his cottage glittering in 

 the rising sun, M'hite as snow. They danced, 

 they sung, they shouted and screamed with joy. 

 The whole island was in a commotion, given up to 

 wonder and curiosity, and the laughable scenes 

 Avhich ensued after they got possession of the tub 

 and brush, baffled description. The high-bred 

 immediately voted it a cosmetic and kalydor, and 

 superlatively happy did many a swarthy coquette 

 consider herself, could she but enhance her charms 

 by a daub of the white brush. And now party 

 spirit ran high, as it will do in more civihzed 

 countries, as to who was and who was not best 

 entitled to preference. One party urged their su- 

 perior rank ; one had the brush and was deter- 

 mined at all events to keep it ; and a third tried 

 to overturn the whole, that they might obtain 

 some of the sweepings. They did not even scru- 

 ple to rob each other of the little share that some 

 had been so happy as to secure. But soon new 

 hme was prepared, and in a week not a hut, a do- 

 mestic utensil, a war club or a garment, but was 

 as white as snow ; not an inhabitant but had a 

 skin painted with the most grotesque figures ; not 

 a ])i<T but what was similarly wliitened : and even 

 mothers might be seen in every direction, caper- 

 ing with extravagant gestures, and yelling with 

 delight at the superior beauty of their white- 

 washed infants." 



Barometers. — If our correspondent, writing 

 from Enosburgh, Vt., will send us the facts to 

 which he alludes, in relation to the barometer, w© 

 will publish them for the benefit of the p.tiic. 



