78 PRACTICAL FORESTBT. 



It is not necessary to select the best and most fertile 

 land upon which to raise trees, for any that is rich 

 enough to give the plants a good- start in life will answer, 

 because the annual dressing of leaves that the soil re- 

 ceives will be sufiScient to keep the trees growing. There 

 are doubtless many situations, where a single tree would 

 not thrive, as on a prairie, a bleak hillside, or other ex- 

 posed positions, where by planting a number together 

 they would mutually protect each other, and wiU usually 

 take care of themselves. We have millions of acres of 

 barren, naked, sandy, rocky, and otherwise unproductive 

 lands, that might readily be covered with valuable forests. 

 Large plantations of forest trees have been established in 

 Europe, and there is no good reason why the same should 

 not be done in America. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

 PRESERVATION OF FORESTS. 



In the first settlement of our Atlantic Coast there was 

 an actual necessity for clearing off the forests, in order to 

 obtain land for cultivation, and while at this day the 

 greater part of our arable lands has been cleared, there is 

 still quite large areas well adapted to cultivation and await- 

 ing the husbandman. But there are still larger areas 

 of hills and mountains that are not, and probably never 

 will be worth clearing for any agricultural use, and as 

 such lands are to a large extent still covered with forests, 

 it is not too late to attempt their preservation. These 

 wood-lands have, it is true, been overrun more or less 

 and the best timber removed, but this has not to any 

 great extent affected their value in the way of influence 

 on the climate of the surrounding country, and as sources 

 of water supply to feed our brooks and rivers. 



The Adirondack region of the northern part of the 



