Proceedixgs of the Farmers' Club. g69 



2. Farmers must learn not to cut clown, but to cut out. In all 

 woods there are many poor, crooked trees. Cut tliese and make room 

 for better wood to grow ; but never strip a woodland at once of its 

 growth. When a forest is thus thinned, seed should be sown in it. 

 For instance, I this fall sow thirty pounds of yellow locust seed on a 

 rocky crest. It will do me little good, but the next generation will 

 draw a lai'ger revenue from those locusts than they would from twice 

 the area in common pasturage. 



Mr. P. T. Quinn. — I would ask Mr. Greeley his opinion as to the 

 increased productiveness of lands on account of the presence of tim- 

 ber on the hills. 



Mr. Horace Greeley. — If I had 100 acres of pasture and mowland 

 in a rolling or hilly country, I would keep twenty-five in woods and 

 get more grass from the seventy-five that were in gi-ass, than I could 

 by stripping the hills and putting all in grass. Timber on hills has 

 two eflfects. It makes the vales warmer from protection, and it 

 increases the amount of moisture. For this purpose I especially value 

 the hemlock, among the evergreens. 



Dr. J. C. Y. Smith. — jSTature has a process of preserving timber, 

 which it is singular mem have not imitated. The bog-timber of Ire- 

 land, found in their peat bogs, is thousands of years old, and th§ art 

 of obtaining it has been reduced to a science, so to speak. With an 

 iron rod the timber is found lying deep in the bog, and the operator 

 can tell the length and dimensions of a tree, and whether it is suited 

 for wagon hubs, or for uses requiring less durable wood. Last year, 

 when the river Po, in Italy, was at a low stage, some piles which 

 were driven by Julius Cassar, for the purpose of crossing by a bridge,, 

 were discovered, and they were in a sound condition. 



Mr. Horace Greeley. — I doubt that ver}' much. 



Dr. Isaac P. Trimble. — That story is not incredible. In a Cypress 

 swamp in Xortli Carolina, I have seen a tree eleven hundred years 

 ©Id, growing right over a fallen stick of timber, in the mud, that 

 showed an age of nine hundred years, and perfectly sound. 



In this connection Mr. Theodore Heinemann was introduced as 

 the inventor of an 



Improved Process foe PRESEEviNa TrvreER. 

 Mr. Heinemann said that the subject of wood preserving had 

 been so exhausted by the wise suggestions of the previous speakers 

 ' that anything further from him must appear unnecessary and arro- 

 [Inst.] 24 



