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the simple process of nature. It is much also, to restore shade in summer and shelter in 

 winter, by the renewal of our forests." 



Mr. Morrill Allen, of Pembroke, Mass., says : " A man in Bristol County, about 

 fifty years ago, planted a field somewhat exhausted, with acorns ; when the young trees 

 were two or three inches high he ploughed and hoed as in a field of Indian corn ; the 

 trees grew, to the astonishment of the whole neighbourhood, and in less than forty years 

 were ripe for the axe. About a century since there was an experiment in this town in 

 planting the white oak for ship-timber, the success of which ought to have encouraged 

 frequent repetition. The grove was in cutting for timber thirty years since, and a man 

 between seventy and eighty years old told me that in his boyhood he assisted in planting 

 those "trees. It is not to the existing generation so helpless an undertaking as some 

 would represent it, to plant forest-trees, even those of slow growth. I recollect m.easure- 

 ing the circumference of an oak tree in West Newbury, the acorn of which was planted 

 by Benjamin Poore, who is yet comparatively a young man, and I think it measured 

 twenty-seven inches. It is a well-proportioned, handsome tree. Had he planted at the 

 same time fifteen acres of similar soil it would have become before now an inexhaustible 

 wood-lot for the use of one family. 



" Another gentleman, also of the name of Fay, of Essex County, commenced, in 

 1846, planting, on his estate near Lynn, in Essex County, and in that and the two suc- 

 ceeding years planted 200,000 imported trees, to which were afterwards added nearly as 

 many more, raised directly from the seed, nearly '200 acres .being covered in all. The 

 sites of these plantations were stony hill-sides, fully exposed to the wind, destitute of 

 loam, their only covering a few straggling barberry bushes and junipers, with an abund- 

 ant undergrowth of woodwax, always a certain indication, in Essex County, of .sterile 

 soil. He employed in his plantations oaks, ashes, maples, Norway spruce, Scotch and 

 Austrian pines ; but the principal tree planted was the European larch. No labour was 

 expended on the land previous to planting, the trees, about one foot high, being simply 

 inserted with a spade ; and no protection has at any time been given them, save against 

 fire and browsing animals. I recently visited these plantations, twenty-nine years after 

 their formation, and took occasion to measure several of the trees, but more especially 

 the larches. Some of these are now over fifty feet in height, and fifteen inches in diam- 

 eter three feet from the ground, and the average of many trees examined is over forty 

 feet in height and twelve inches in diameter. The broad leaved trees have also made a 

 most satisfactory growth, and many of them on the margins of the plantations are fully 

 forty feet high. During the past ten years about 700 cords of firewood have been cut 

 from these plantations, besides all the fencing required for a large estate. Firewood, 

 fence-posts, and railroad sleepers, to the value of thousands of dollars, could be cut to-day, 

 to the great advantage of the remaining trees. The profit of such an operation is appar- 

 ent, especially when we consider that the land used for these plantations did not cost 

 more than $10 an acre, and probably not half that amount." 



Mr. Henry Ives, of Batavia, Genesee County, New York, in a communication to 



the New York Farmers' Club in the spring of 1876, states the result of experience in 



tree-planting as follows : — 



" Five or six years ago I planted two acres with four-year-old seedlings of white elm 

 and soft maple into forest rows, sixteen feet apart and three feet apart in the row. Now 

 the best of them are twenty feet high and twelve inches in circumference, and for thin- 

 nin" out the rows I sell trees for more money than wheat would have brought, grown for 

 these years, and I can continue to sell so until they are so large that I can take them for 

 fire-wood, and I am growing a good crop of orchard grass between the rows. So that these 

 acres in forest timber are paying as well, and are likely to pay for years to come, as any 

 other acres on the farm. I am cutting now the second crop of wood, where the first or 

 oritnnal timber was taken ofi" about twenty-five years ago, and last winter 1,000 rails 

 were taken by a neighbour from one-third of an acre of growth, besides a quantity of 

 wood from the top, and timber not making rails. Another neighbour used nice black 



