11 
young pine, the first or second year from the seed, was 
liable to kill it, and hence sowed the rye to shade the pine 
plants. The little weeds and blueberry bushes did the shading 
for Augustus Pratt. Although I give a picture of one place 
where the late sown of the Pease pines are so thick as to 
grow very little, yet most of them are thrifty and gain in height, 
on an average, about eighteen inches a year. Many acres are 
covered with tall beautiful trees, averaging seven or more inches 
in diameter, and from forty to fifty feet in height. To John 
W. Copley, manager for the Third family, I am indebted 
for much attention and information. He and the head of the 
Enfield Shakers readily agreed with me as to the great advan- 
tage of thinning, and, although they had never seemed to have 
thought of thinning before, they set about it at once, and on 
my second visit I found that they were thinning their trees 
and were greatly pleased with the operation. They were get- 
ting much wood and fencing. 
They felt sure that with locusts from their plantation of that 
tree, for stakes, and with wire for pins instead of withes, they 
could, with the pine poles cut out in thinning, make a fence that 
would stand forty years without repairing. If any of the poles 
were a little too sappy, they would slightly hew them on two 
sides. If all the owners of cheap and waste lands in our state 
could just look upon the barren plains of the Shakers, and then 
go into the beautiful pine plantation on just such land adjoining, 
they would no more doubt the practicability of covering our 
cheap and waste lands with timber plantations of great value 
than they would doubt their ability to grow a crop of corn or 
grass on good land. 
I have before written of the success of Mr. Jewell of Win- 
chester, this state, who, in 1849, gathered twelve bushels of 
white pine cones and sowed them broadcast on the grass sod of 
two and a half acres of worn-out pasture land. In 18g1 I found 
this a most beautiful plantation. As I remember them, the trees 
then averaged about sixty-six feet in height and eleven inches 
in diameter four feet from the ground. The cones and the little 
grass saved the young plants from the sunstroke. The seasons 
may have been favorable. 
