14 
properly pruned from time to time, the clear butt-logs of fair 
size on the stump in the Adirondack region would be worth 
from ten to twenty-two dollars a thousand feet while the aver- 
age price of spruce, as has been stated, is only one and one 
half dollars. Counting the grains of a great many spruce 
trees in the Adirondack region, from the heart of the trees 
towards the outside, the number of grains or yearly rings to 
the inch next the heart, was found to vary from fifteen to forty- 
six. But when the trees got to be a foot in diameter, with 
their tops above the surrounding trees, they had only from five 
to twenty-six grains tothe inch. Nature in this clearly demon- 
strates the necessity of giving room to the tops of trees. 
The next picture actually represents the exact rate a spruce, 
coming up in an old forest, did grow. ‘You see it was many 
years old before it was three inches in diameter. Then its 
top got above some of the surrounding trees, and it grew faster 
till it became again crowded, and grew very slowly. Then 
these woods were thinned out, and this tree’s top gained in 
size with its increased space to grow in, and the tree soon grew 
very fast fora spruce. This tree demonstrated, as much 4s 
any one tree can demonstrate a general principle, that thinning 
of thick, growing trees is of great importance. 
Reckoning money at four per cent., compound interest, and 
saying nothing of taxes, a plantation growing a crop of timber 
in ninety years is worth when the trees start from the seed, thirty- 
two times as much as a plantation upon which an equally val- 
uable crop is grown in one hundred and eighty years. A good 
crop of white pine for merchantable inch boards can be grown 
in sixty years. For box boards in forty years. Starting with 
the trees thick and properly thinning and pruning, suppose it 
took seventy-two years to grow fifty thousand feet to the acre. 
Then you should have about twenty-five thousand feet of clear 
butt-logs, and the timber on the lot at present prices, would be 
worth about five hundred dollars per acre. Reckoning your 
money to have doubled thhee times, that is, for each dollar in- 
vested to have become efebt dollars, and dividing the five hun- 
dred dollars by eig » and it makes the acre of land as soon as 
the pine seed is in it, worth Bh yo and-a-heatf dollars. The 
