14 TREES OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
only for ship-timber and lumber for house-building, but for 
materials for tanning and dyeing, for carriage-making, basket- 
making, plane-making, last-making, and for furniture and the 
implements of husbandry. 
Even these foreign resources are fast failing us. Within the 
last quarter of a century, the forests of Maine and New York, 
from which we draw our largest supplies, have disappeared 
more rapidly than those of Massachusetts ever did. In a quar- 
ter of a century more, at this rate, the supply in many places 
will be entirely cut off. In many parts of both those States, 
which recently furnished the most abundant supplies, agricul- 
ture is already taking the place of the lumber trade; and the 
disforested region, now changing into beautiful farms, will never 
be allowed to resume its original wildness; or, if the attempt 
should be made, to restore the forests, the experiment would 
require a hundred years. 
7. Another special use of the forests of the State, is in the 
production of maple sugar. Great quantities are already made, 
and the manufacture might be much more generally introduced. 
This subject has already received considerable attention. It 
deserves much more. In many favorable situations, the culti- 
vation of the maple tree would cost only forethought. The 
labor of planting the trees might be performed late in the year, 
when the fall work was over, and the making of sugar be at- 
tended to early, before the spring work had begun. 
Of minor importance, but of much more than is usually given 
to it, is the production of nuts of various kinds, the fruit of 
forest trees. The produce of the shellbark, chestnut, beech, 
hazel, and acorn, already valuable, might be increased in value 
almost indefinitely, by selecting the best native varieties, and 
improving them by processes similar to those to which we owe 
the fine varieties of apple and pear, and the cultivated varieties 
of European nuts, and by introducing similar trees, such as the 
pecan nut, the English walnut, and the European hazel. 
8. ‘The most extensive and important use of the forest is in 
the fuel it furnishes. Most of the fires, through the State, are 
still chiefly fed from this source. The population, by the last 
census, was something over 737,000. Now, it has been found 
