9 
last report, I had two pines from which a hundred or more limbs 
had been pruned, cut and sawed into boards, and there was not 
a particle of rot in them. I have known instances where live 
limbs have been torn from trees, leaving wounds of greater 
or less length in the body of the tree, and for rot to begin in 
those wounds. A live branch some six inches in diameter was 
cut from a thrifty white pine, and that knot slowly rotted with 
a white rot which extended some two feet down into the tree. 
A fundamental rule in pruning, should be to remove all the 
live limbs, which are to be removed, when they are small, and 
never remove many live limbs from a tree at any one time. I 
have never known a tree injured by a common sense pruning. 
All have known fruit, shade and timber trees greatly damaged 
by a pruning which reminds one of butchery, and which in a 
lover of the beautiful God-shaped trees required a large amount 
of Christianity to prevent expressions unbecoming a gentleman, 
much more a Christian. Observation and sense are the funda- 
mental qualifications for a forester or a farmer, and if to these 
be added health and industry, fires, or some such occurrences 
as droughts or floods, can alone prevent success, and these are 
not very liable to occur. 
THE GROWING OF TIMBER ON WASTE LANDS. 
The United States census of 1880 states that there were, at 
that time, one hundred and sixteen thousand acres of turned 
out old fields and pastures in this state, producing neither farm 
nor forest crop. The amount of such idle land is believed to be 
increasing. This land was originally covered with trees. 
There is no doubt whatever but the most of it is now in good 
condition to grow crops of white pine, and some of it other 
timber trees, at a great profit. A hundred thousand acres of 
this waste land sown to white pine seed and properly cared for, 
would, in from forty to seventy-five years, be worth from one 
hundred to four or five hundred dollars per acre, or somewhere 
from ten to thirty millions of dollars, at present low prices. I 
give a few facts to prove this statement: 
