from the acre during the time would amount to more than all the timber the acre would have produced if left unthinned. One old rule is to keep the distance between the trees equal to one fifth their height. By this rule, when the trees are 100 feet in height they would have 108 to the acre. For New Hampshire we think this rule keeps the trees too near together for the best results. But in the larch forests, set by the dukes of Athol, and often referred to by speakers and writers, the trees were expected to be large enough for war ships of seventy-four guns when they were seventy-two years old, and at that time to have 400 trees to the acre, averaging fifty solid feet of timber to the tree, and scaling, by our law, 200,000 feet to the acre, and to be worth twenty-five dollars per 1,000 feet. This to me was a very large story, in fact bigger than my capacity for believing. But these are Scottish acres of 6,150 square yards, while ours are only 4,840. These famous larches were to be thinned so as to stand at least twelve feet apart, and there would be only 302 trees to our acre. If reports are reliable, these larches grew very fast. Those set in 1743 were in fifty-two years nine feet three inches in circumference, four feet from the ground, and 100 feet in height, and in 126 years were sixteen feet in girth and 120 feet high. It is useless to tell me that these trees were of this size and only twelve feet apart. From 1728 to 1826 these dukes set more than 10,000 acres, mostly to larches, but some to other trees. The larch was not, I think, a native of that section. The dukes were disappointed in their sale, and the result was that the larches were worth only from $600 to $800 per American acre. But this was pretty well for that very poor, bleak land, upon the Caledonian mountains.

To grow trees, pigs, or steers for profit, they must be kept thrifty all the time. I have often seen pines where they came up so thick as to be almost limbless, sapless, and much stunted by the time they were six feet high. It takes several years of slow thinning to get such thrifty. I think pines should be kept so far apart that when forty feet high twenty feet of that height should be covered, not with dead but with thrifty limbs. Trees feed largely by their leaves from the air. Wood burned or rotted goes almost entirely into the air as tree and other plant food, and through the leaves it is eaten from the air and is thus

turned into wood again.

The rain and snow rising from and falling to the earth through the air washes the atmosphere, and takes some of the wood material which the chemical process of burning and rotting sent into the air and carries it to the roots of the trees, where it is taken up by the spongioles. Hence trees cannot be thrifty unless they have sufficient space for their tops and roots. Since they ask little feed except air, and the power to make them grow is sunshine, we ought to be willing to allow them enough of these cheap articles, and by so doing shall soon find the trees ready to be converted into cash. One hundred pines, making 50,000 feet, grown upon one acre in sixty years, is about what can be done in New Hampshire.

The first great object in thinning is to throw the annual wood. growth into fewer trees, and when the growth is mixed, into the more profitable kinds, so as to make timber, instead of having it divided among a great number of little trees, fit only for wood and fence-poles. By properly thinning, the actual growth is much increased, the same as in grass, or fodder-corn, roots, etc. you get more weight to the acre by having the right number of plants, instead of too many. So by thinning, you get more growth, as well as more of it in timber and less in wood.

SHALL WE TRIM TREES FOR FOREST GROWTH?

Dry limbs upon trees produce the black, loose knots which greatly injure boards, and the sooner they are knocked off the better. We think generally, at present rates of labor and timber, it will not pay to trim very much. We would not have very many green limbs of much size cut from pines for fear of rotten knots, pitchy places, and sun scald of the tender bark, but a little judicious trimming will prove beneficial. Mr. Parker, a well known mill man, of Lisbon, after sawing a lot which was trimmed eleven years previous to cutting, believes both in thinning and trimming. So does Mr. Jewell, of Winchester. The foresters of Europe have recently disagreed as to the advisability of trimming cone-bearing trees to much extent.

SHALL WE SOW TREE SEED TO GROW FORESTS?

Some forty-five years ago Mr. Hayes, the old treasurer of Strafford county, sowed acorns upon the poorest of plains land,

and has not grown much of a crop. Pitch pines or gray birches would undoubtedly have done much better. The trees must be adapted to the land, the same as any other crop. A goodly number of acres have been successfully sown to forest trees in Massachusetts and various other states.

We will first give you a statement of Harvey Jewell, Esq., of Winchester, this state, who has set a very valuable example. On two and a half acres of hilly, worn-out pasture land, in September, 1849, he scattered on the grass sod about twelve bushels of white pine cones, and touched not the land (keeping the cattle out) till the tenth year, when he cut out about nine tenths of the trees. He has thinned them some six or eight times. In thirtythree years the trees stand about 600 to the acre, from five to fifteen inches in diameter, one foot from the ground, and are trimmed from twenty to twenty-four feet, and are about fifty-five feet in height. He thinks in sixty years from sowing, having then thinned so as to leave about one hundred trees to the acre, each acre will then have about 50,000 feet of timber. As the timber will be of fine quality, and only a mile from the depot, it is not unreasonable to suppose it will then be worth $400 per acre. For pails and paper pulp and timber, the five hundred trees to be cut out in thinning each acre before that time must bring quite a sum. Mr. Jewell thinks he sowed five times as much seed as needed, and we think the fact that some of his trees are only five inches inches in diameter while others are fifteen inches, or at least five times as large, proves that he would have been the gainer by beginning to thin earlier, and to have taken out more, but could judge better by seeing the trees, which we hope to do. We sincerely thank Mr. Jewell, and think his experiment ought to be worth scores of thousands of dollars to the land-owners of New Hampshire. To get the seed, Mr. Jewell would cut pines well loaded with cones, the first part of September, just before the cones open, and sow soon after. He wisely cut the few scattering pines upon the land he sowed, so as to let his young trees have a fair start. Such is our faith in thinning that we think Mr. Jewell will, in sixty years, get some four times as much money for his pine crop as he would have done if he had left all the thinning to nature.

Mr. Fay, of Massachusetts, has sown various kinds of native

tree seed, and imported (at a cost of less than a cent apiece) and set many foreign trees, and also set many native trees. Two men, he says, will set from one to two acres a day. Being careful to guard against washing, he thinks well of sowing tree seed, very slightly covered, in shallow plowed furrows, and sometimes thus sets his trees ten feet apart each way, and then thins from time to time. We should think ten feet each way would cause the pines to grow too short and limby when young, but trial will tell. Mr. Fay thinks best to set the young trees seven to ten feet apart, and finds some of his foreign kinds growing better than some native kinds. While acorns may be planted where trees are to stand, many think it better to start pines and most other kinds in nurseries.

THE PRIMEVAL FORESTS AND SECOND GROWTH.

Two hundred and sixty-one years ago (or possibly a little earlier at one of the places), when the Hiltons and Thompsons settled in this state, upon the two Piscataqua points in Dover and Rye, its 5,763,200 acres of virtually unbroken forest were practically growing not a foot of wood or timber during a century, that is, the net gain was nothing. In this comatose condition this forest had stood for centuries, unknown to even the geologist. Of sound but light "frow" old wood, worth from twenty to thirty per cent. less than "smart," heavy, and solid wood of "second" growth, it averaged perhaps twentyfive or thirty cords per acre, in the hard-wood lands, and some 6000 or 7000 feet of timber to the acre in the soft growth sections. Always slowly dying and slowing rotting, this decay was made good by the languid growth, so that the bulk of the forest decayed, and was replaced, perhaps, once in a century, and few if any trees were alive at two hundred years of age. Some majestic trees indeed there were, but "few and far between." The " The "corpses," lying prone, lodged, and standing at every angle from the horizontal to the perpendicular, equalled perhaps in number and bulk a quarter that of the living trees. I judge what this forest was, largely by examining an 8,000 acre lot, never touched by white man, in which it was once my misfortune to have a pecuniary interest. On another lot I found some acres of very good growth, vastly superior to the other

portions, and afterwards learned that a tornado had blown down all the trees where that good growth stood, some fifty years

before.

WHY NEVER-CUT PRIMEVAL FORESTS MUST BE POOR.

The truth is, that the perpetual shade in the depths of the primeval woods is no place in which to sprout and grow good, thrifty young trees to take the place of the old as they die. If a young tree in such a place does not actually die, it is so old and stunted, limbless, vigorless, and very likely wounded and diseased, before it can lift its head above its fellows, and spread its life inhaling leaves (which are at once mouths and lungs) in its life-giving air and sunshine, that it very seldom becomes a valuable tree. Hence there are few suitable young trees in the old forests to take the place of the old ones, as they die, and hence it is that one acre of woods, upon land which has been cut over and come up well to trees, is, when sufficiently grown (say in fifty years for fire-wood, and in one hundred years for timber), worth several acres, say four, of that "first growth old forest, which had never been disturbed since the flood.

NATURE NOT THE BEST FORESTER.

Nature as a forester, having all the time since the flood, has now in our White Mountain region, and in the pineries of Michigan, only an average of from 6,000 to 7,000 feet per acre of timber to show, or a seventh or an eighth part as much as a man can easily grow upon an acre of cleared land in some sixty years. And yet nature is held up as a better forester than

man!

CARE OF TREES MAN'S FIRST EMPLOYMENT.

God's last finishing touch to his newly created earth was to plant a beautiful spot with trees, and the first work he gave man to do was to "dress and keep" that park covered with trees planted with his own loving hand. So God set the trees, and commanded man to "dress and keep" them, instead of leaving nature to do it all; and man did take care of the trees so long as he did right, and it was not till after he had done wrong and got turned out, that he or his descendants preached