106 



hilly or very stony, and all that does not readily bear good crops of corn and grass, may 

 be, at comparatively little expense, sown with the seeds, or set with the young plants of 

 the most valuable forest trees. The sowing or the planting should be very liberal, 

 the young trees, when close togetter, protecting each other, and the poorer ones, when 

 the plants become too close, affording excellent fuel, and serving, as they grow large, 

 many important purposes. In this way a valuable permanent wood-lot might be added to 

 farms, the owners of which are now obliged, at large cost, to get their fuel from other 

 sources. 



" Much is to be done for the improvement of woodlands now existing. In some 

 cases they are managed with great care ; the best means of thinning, pruning and felling, 

 are studied and practised. But in many cases — indeed, in most instances — they are left 

 in utter neglect. The consequences are often very visible. In the cedar swamps just 

 spoken of, the natural seed-sowing has been so profuse, that the plants spring up thick 

 enough to almost cover the ground. Ten or twelve may sometimes be seen on a square 

 foot. These grow up well together for a year or two. Afterwards they seem to be strug- 

 gling for existence. The growth of all is retarded — almost stopped. In a few years the 

 strongest overtop the others, which gradually die. Still the number left living is far too 

 gr«at for the ground, and few of them become fine and vigorous trees. All the side 

 branches die for want of Ught and air, and the topmost shoot, never sufficient to form a 

 shapely tree, is left alone. The same thing takes place in beech groves. Ten or twenty 

 times as many plants spring up as can be sustained. They go on together vegetating, but 

 hardly growing. I know instances of beech woods, which have made little perceptible 

 growth for twenty years. . . The remedy is obvious. Every year, from the first, they 

 need to be thinned. For the first few years the plants removed are of no value except for 

 transplantation for fuel. Afterward they are of use in innumerable ways ; the young 

 cedars, larches, and chestnuts, for stakes and poles ; hickories for walking-sticks ; oaks 

 and ashes for basket work ; lever-wood and hoop-ash for whip-stocks and levers; all of 

 the five latter for hoops. The products of the thinning will thus obviously far more than 

 repay the labour, even if this were not necessary for the welfare of the remaining trees." 



Mr. Fay, of Massachusetts, says : — 



" When I bought my place, except a few stinted red cedars at Parker's Point, and 

 some white cedars in the swamps, there was not an evergreen tree within three miles of 

 my house, and hardly any tree of any kind in sight of it. The woods (oak, beech and 

 hickory) were in the dells and valleys behind the hills fronting the sea, and it was main- 

 tained that trees would not grow and could not be made to do so, in the face of the salt- 

 laden winds from the south and south-west. The exposure was certainly great and the 

 soil poor, and trees planted singly or sparsely, perhaps, jcould not have resisted it, but close 

 planting made a shelter, and those not specially from an inland habitat (like the white 

 maple) have done well, and seem to the manner born. 



"In twenty- three years after commencing to plant, Mr. Fay has a plantion of 125 

 acres, of which he had sown a hundred broad-cast and planted twenty-five. The planta- 

 tion consists largely of pine, spruce and larch ; they have succeeded well and are general- 

 ly about thirty-five or forty feet high, and a Joot through at the ground. Mr. Fay says 

 that he planted these trees as a matter of taste and experiment, but that jf he had sought 

 a market, there would have been a profit already in the sales of wood. He has en- 

 deavoured, he says, to raise a forest about him at the least possible cost of labour, and not 

 looking much to the hurrying of the result or to count up an early profit. The land was 

 denuded, and exhausted, and moss grown, and he took this method to cover it with ver- 

 dure and restore it, believing that the wood would compensate him or his heirs sooner or 

 later In closing his discursive remarks, he says that, considering the posi- 

 tion of his place, exposed on the north-west to the violent winds of winter sweeping across 

 Buzzard's Bay, and in summer to the strong breezes from the south-west, bringing salt 

 spray from Vineyard Sound, the vigorous growth and promising appearance of his forest 

 plantation is very encouraging to those more favourably placed, Not only may the de- 

 struction of our forests be partially remedied at a cheap cost, but the waste and sterility 

 of our land by long cultivating and pasturing, be removed and replaced with fertility by 



