[ XIV ] 



run wild till they have approached maturity, a good deal of skilful 

 pruning will be required to bring the individual trees that are to 

 be preserved into such form as will give them most value. Nothing 

 but practice and careful observation can confer this power. The 

 little treatise of DesCars on the pruning of forest and ornamental 

 trees, translated by Mr. C. S. Sargent, of the Arnold Arboretum, 

 and published by A. Williams & Co., of Boston, (price 75 cents ) 

 contains full and explicit illustrated directions for all the manual 

 work of pruning, and is invaluable as a guide to the novice, and a 

 work of reference to experienced foresterfr. But mere manual skill 

 in the performance of the work will be of little avail vyithout the 

 application of a thorough knowledge of the principles of tree growth, 

 and a strict compliance with the requirements of their nature. 



If our agriculturists will but apply to the management of their 

 forests the same intelligence with which they direct the culture 

 of other farm crops, they will find an equally ready response 

 to their efforts. The farmer who should leave his field of corn or 

 potatoes to shift for itself, or suffer his cattle and hogs to ramble 

 through it at will, would be justly sneered at by his neighbors and 

 punished by the loss of his crop — and trees have no more capacity 

 for self-management than com or other vegetables, and are quite as 

 ready to profit by judicious culture, and to yield returns corres- 

 ponding to the care bestowed upon them. They are not liable to 

 be utterly destroyed, as corn is, by the incursions of live stock, but 

 they do suffer serious injury from the trampling and rooting up of 

 the ground. I have seen beautiful groves of oaks in Iowa full of 

 dead and dying trees, and, on asking the cause, have been told that 

 the native woods "can't stand civilization," but always die out when 

 cattle begin to run in them; and I am told that, in Kentucky and 

 elsewhere in the South, the young growth is found to contain only 

 the inferior varieties of oaks, as the swine running in the woods 

 seek and greedily eat the acorns of the white oak, on account of 

 their superior sweetness. Has anyone ever estimated the cost of 

 raising hogs on such food? 



I have endeavored, in the preceding pages, to confine myself 

 to the special features of forest growth which need to be re- 

 garded in the effort to develop and improve a native wood, wher- 

 ever it~ may be. The planting and culture of an artificial forest 

 is quite another affair, and I have made no allusion to it because 

 my special object has been, if possible, to urge the fact, and 

 arouse attention to it, that we still have vast resources of latent 

 wealth on every side, susceptible of development by proper man- 

 agement, which we are everywhere suffering to run to waste. 

 The work of planting and rearing artificial forests can not indeed 

 be urged too strongly, and there is no danger of its being overdone. 

 But the conviction of its necessity can be more readily and forcibly 

 impressed upon the popular mind by an illustration of the possi- 

 bilities of forest culture, when applied to our native woods, than by 

 any other means. The need of further progress by artificial plant- 

 ing will speedily become obvious, and will follow in natural course. 



It has been asserted, and with truth, that it is idle for us to 

 establish schools of forestry, because there is no demand for fores- 

 ters, and consequently no stimulus to the acquirement of a knowl- 



