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to barely struggle between life and death, after which thej 

 are likely to grow rapidly. As this scheme will be regarded 

 as chimerical by those who have not investigated the subject, 

 I give below extracts from letters which I have received from 

 practical tree-planters on Cape Cod and elsewhere, embody- 

 ing interesting facts and practical suggestions. 



John Doane, Orleans. (Mr. Doane, now eighty-six years of age, is the oldest 

 living sylviculturist in Barnstable County.) I have planted one hundred acres 

 in Orleans and seventy in Brewster. The whole plantation in Orleans is about 

 five hundred acres ; in Eastham seven hundred acres ; in Wellfleet four hundred ; 

 in Truro six hundred ; in Chatham, Harwich, Dennis, and Yarmouth, about four 

 hundred each; and in Barnstablesix hundred acres. In regard to the other towns 

 on Cape Cod I have no definite information, though trees have been planted in many 

 towns on the Cape. I have made a machine for planting the seed, that I have 

 lent to the tree-planters in five of the neighboring towns. The land I have 

 planted with pines was not worth over fifty cents per acre before planting, and I 

 have sold some since covered with young pines, for fourteen dollars per acre. I 

 consider it a good investment. 



Jolin Kenrich, South Orleans.- -My experiments in tree-planting have been 

 made on over a hundred acres now covered with trees from one to thirty-five 

 years old, chiefly pitch pine. I am now trying Scotch and Corsican pine, and 

 European larch. My first aim has been to cover my worn-out lands with beauty 

 and verdure, and it has proved a successful and economic experiment. The seed 

 of the pitch pine is worth from one to two dollars a pound, the higher price 

 being in the end tiie cheapest. Fresh seeds, carefully gathered, are as sure to 

 vegetate as corn, but obtained from seedsmen, they are very unreliable in germi- 

 nating. Euro]}ean nurserymen take far greater pains in gathering forest tree 

 seeds, and understand the art of curing them better than Americans. I have 

 tried every method of tree -plan ting, transplanting trees from the smallest to 

 those that are two feet high. This is a costly plan, but may be adopted when 

 one wishes to save time, and desires a few trees as a wind break or otherwise. In 

 transplanting trees immediately from my own nursery to the field, my favorite 

 time is just as the buds begin to start in the spring. I have planted seeds both 

 with a planter and by hand. On our light sands a man and boy will plant three 

 acres m a day. Dropping six seeds in a hill, it will take about half a pound of 

 seed to the acre. This is my favorite method, and is more satisfactory in results, 

 though more costly than that of using the plow and planter. When the ever- 

 greens are about two feet high I would thin them, leaving one thrifty plant in 

 each hill. I do not trim till they get large, and then cut off only the dead 

 branches. 



Tiilly Crosby, Brewster. In our small town about fifteen hundred acres of old 

 waste land have been planted with pitch-pine. The Norway pine has not proved 

 a success with us. Many old fields bought for fifty cents per acre, and planted 

 with pine twenty-five years ago, are now worth from ten to twenty dollars an acre. 

 The pines grow well for twenty-five or thirty years, and when cut off a second 

 crop springs up immediately, and this crop does better than the first. The pitch- 

 pine takes root and grows on our barren beach sand where no soil is perceptible. Our 

 people are now planting trees every year. I have recently planted twelve acres. 

 Two years ago I cut off a lot planted thirty years since, and the land is now 

 full of young pine trees growing from the seed scattered by the first growth. A 

 man with a two-horse team can plant ten acres in a day, and three pounds of 

 seed will do the whole. 



E. Higgins, Eastham. Thirty years ago twenty acres of condemned tillage 

 land, worth one dollar per acre, was planted with pitch pine. The present value 

 of this land is fifteen dollars per acre. Prior to 1870, two hundred and twenty- 

 five acres more of the same sort of land was thus planted, the present value of 



