BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 381 
but by his intelligent labor he could assist her to cover these barren 
lands with white pine trees, which in thirty or thirty-five years 
would grow large enough for cheap lumber; he could then cut 
them, and leave the land in as good condition for nature to grow 
various crops, as it would have been as if no trees had been 
grown on it. If fires could be prevented, and if man would lay 
aside profit, and wait two or three hundred years for nature to 
pursue her own way, she would grow crop after crop of trees each 
perhaps larger than the other, and let them fall to the earth and 
decay, until a soil had been formed adapted to the growth of pine 
trees large enough for clear lumber; but to expect a pine tree to 
grow four feet in diameter at the ground, and rise to one hundred 
feet in height, with a smooth, straight trunk, in seventy-five or a 
hundred years, on a comparatively barren soil, is asking of nature 
toomuch. Let us be reasonable, and be satisfied with the smaller 
growth, which can be secured in half the time. 
The remarks in this paper relative to the time of cutting trees 
and the injury by worms, refer to the second growth pine trees 
cut and sawed into lumber without being soaked in water. Pine 
timber cut and floated down the rivers, and kept in the water all 
summer before being sawed, would probably lose those attractive 
constituents which induce the miller to deposit the eggs that pro- 
duce the worm or borer, and thus if cut at any season would be 
likely to escape injury. 
