16 
-thinnings, in many localities, for wood, fencing, shingles 
shook, and timber, would be worth quite a sum. I think it, 
safe to say that land upon which such a plantation can be grown 
can be bought in this state for one dollar per acre. But some 
one says this looks well on paper. I agree that it does, and it 
can be made to look better on the land. Even allow one half 
for the difference between theory and practice, and it looks well 
then. A friend of mine has lately taken two thousand dollars 
for the boards and shooks cut upon four acres of uncared for 
sapling white pine judged to be seventy-five years of age. 
The net income was almost three hundred and fifty, dollars per 
acre. 
No one who has studied the growth of timber trees, and 
sawed them into lumber, will doubt that the value of this lot of 
timber could have been very much increased by assisting nature 
in the growth of the trees. The butt-logs could have been 
grown clear lumber, and the time taken to grow the trees of the 
size they were when cut, greatly decreased. As money at four 
per cent. doubles in eighteen years, every eighteen years saved 
in the time of growing the timber diminishes its cost by one 
half. Very generally, by assisting nature you can have your 
trees much larger at sixty years of age, than unassisted nature 
would have them at seventy-eight years of age, and besides the 
very important item of taxes, they will have cost you only one 
half as much. To make known the slowness of the growth of 
trees in the old forests, I copy a page of a table from the excel- 
lent report of Hon. William F. Fox, superintendent of the state 
forests of New York, to whom I am under obligation for many 
favors. Thesame table shows that the few spruces which were 
thirty inches in diameter averaged three hundred and five annual 
rings and those thirteen inches in diameter one hundred and 
seventy-two and seven tenths. As the rings were counted in 
the stumps, which were from thirty inches to three or four feet 
in height, the trees were quite a number of years older than the 
number of rings indicates. A noticeable fact is that the trees 
thirty inches in diameter, which contain about eight times as 
much lumber as those thirteen inches in diameter, are only one 
and a half times as old. This teaches us to keep trees growing 
rapidly. zs 
