Having the honor to hold a place on the same Committee, the present year, which Committee not having been called on by the Chairman to attend to any claims for our premiums, it occurred to me to present to the Society some further account of the success of that experiment, and also some observations upon the subject of forest trees in general.

I did not at the time think that the amount of wood and timber in the county was likely to be greatly increased by the experiment; and by the report of the Chairman, as published in the Transactions of 1839, I am led to think they were also nearly of the same opinion; but as he had tried an experiment, and was the only applicant, our first premium, of thirty dollars was awarded.

The land was not well adapted to the growth of the kinds of trees for which our premium was offered. It had never been ploughed, or pulverized, or cleared of roots and rubbish, except one acre. Furrows had been drawn across it, ten feet apart, and in the springs of 1836 and 1837, three pounds of locust seed had been sown; and in the fall of 1837, between one and two bushels of white oak acorns were planted, all of both kinds, along these furrows, in which they were covered with earth. From the locust seed, he supposed more than ten thousand plants came up; but from the acorns, not a single plant!

To secure the germination of the locust, he thinks it absolutely necessary to soak the seed in hot water-of course not too hot; and he he imputes the total absence of young oaks to an early frost injuring the acorns; but as they could be easily found scattered along in rows, and slightly covered, I should rather charge it to the squirrels.

I would suggest to any person disposed hereafter to plant a forest, to completely pulverize the whole soil, and sow the seed broadcast on the furrows, and of various kinds, and at all depths.

As Mr. Webster sowed but two kinds of seed, and but one came up at all, we were called upon to look at only quite a

number of locust trees, scattered over ten acres of ground; and as these looked rather unpromising, the generous premium must be considered to have been awarded rather to the labor of making an experiment, than to any promised success.

Mr. Webster says in his statement, that in 1835 the land was covered with birches, and some white oak and maple; and on examining the lot a few years afterwards, I was fully of the opinion that the growth of wood would have been quite as valuable, had nothing been done but to exclude cattle from browsing upon the trees and under-wood of native growth.

I again examined the lot on the 13th of the present November, twenty-two years after the first visit and the premium, and I now consider the experiment rather more successful than I had previously expected, so far as the locust is concerned. About one acre, in one corner of the lot, is well covered with locust trees, thirty to forty feet high, and six or eight inches through, and in rather a thrifty state. There was a thin scattering of locust in other parts of the lot; and if locust timber is as lasting for fence posts, and other uses requiring durable wood, as has been supposed, I should think the experiment might encourage the planting of the locust. The quantity and value of wood for fuel would probably have been larger had nothing been done. And if the acre so well stocked with locust is the acre which had been previously "ploughed, and planted with potatoes," it gives a valuable insight into the best mode of preparing the ground and planting. The white birch has now re-assumed its native rights over a large part of the ground, and the white oak and maple are, in a few instances, resuming their places.

I am not aware that any premium has been claimed or paid for the raising of forest trees since the one alluded to; and were it not that the law of the State requires the offering of them, I should suggest the discontinuance of the offer, as without effect, and, so far as fuel is concerned, quite unnecessary.

I am not aware that a single acre of open field, or pasture

land, has been changed from being an open field or pasture, in this county, within the period of my remembrance, which now extends to sixty years, by any deliberate design, planting or cultivation; and I am hardly aware that an acre has been cut down, cleared, and made a cultivated field or pasture, within that time. But within the last forty years, hundreds of acres have been overrun by the spontaneous growth of forest trees! In the town of Groveland, it is easy now to show large tracts, over which men now living have held the plough, and swung the scythe and sickle, from which may now be cut from thirty to forty cords of wood to the acre; and by this growth, and the multiplication of fruit and ornamental trees, our landscape now presents a much more wooded prospect than it did forty years ago.

One cause of this great change is the neglect of agriculture, and confining it to fewer acres, since the prevalence of manufactures; another is, the now almost universal use of mineral coal. Most of this increase is the various species of pine.

White pine is a tree of very rapid growth; and I can now cut a frame for a good sized house, from land from which the previous owner cut nearly all the wood which he considered worth cutting in 1838. What were then small trees, of a few feet in height, are now timber. The pine is a very sure and thrifty seedling, and I might now claim your premium for a thousand trees of not less than three years old, all seedlings, and in a most thrifty state-and all growing spontaneously on what was, twelve years ago, chiefly an oak forest. The pine, I believe, never starts from the roots of an old tree, but are in all cases seedlings.

The oak seedling is of slow growth; but still they are constantly renewing from the acorn, in woods of thin growth, and around the margin of oak forests-the leaves affording them a sufficient covering, and the surrounding trees a sufficient shelter from the driving winds and snow; but the most thrifty growth of oak, maple and birch, are from the roots of previous trees, cut down before the life of both root and branches is

exhausted by age. Crops of wood are now raised with as much regularity and certainty as crops of hay or grain, and are profitably taken off every twenty to thirty years. On thirteen acres of cut off land, which I purchased in 1851 at nine dollars an acre, there is now a crop of wood, principally oak, averaging fifteen feet in height, mostly sprung from the roots of the previous growth, and growing with great rapidity, from their large and abundant roots; while in almost every vacancy the seedling pines, before named, are shooting up their spires, and dispute with the oak for the final possession of the soil.

The white birch and the white maple push out numerous sprouts from almost every tree which is cut down, and spread spontaneously as scedlings, on the road-sides and on the margin of forests. A large hill in full view of my house, which was clear pasture land twenty-five or thirty years ago, is now an unbroken forest.

It belonged to the late Rev. Gardner B. Perry, who, with a view to improving his pasture, caused furrows eight or ten feet apart to be ploughed round the hill, keeping as near horizontal as possible, with the tripple purpose of retaining the rain, ploughing up some of the moss, and manuring the intermediate space by the washing down of some of the soil ploughed up. The plan seemed well adapted to improve a smooth hill-side pasture, which it probably would have done, but that a copse of birches, forty rods off, furnished seed, and the winds did the sewing; and now we see a full grown and heavy crop of birch trees. Another neighbor's intervening lot remained unploughed, and is now smooth pasture land.

Another reason why our wood increases so fast is, as before named, the great increase of the use of coal as fuel. Twentyone years ago, I was, with one exception, the only householder making use of coal in the town; now it is in use in almost every family; and for the two last years, nearly eight hundred tons have been imported and consumed-taking the place, ac

cording to my observation, of about sixteen hundred cords of wood!

Fifty years ago, it was a common thing for the farmers of Essex County to sell their farms, and remove to newer States, in alarm at the approaching scarcity of wood and timber. My father-in-law, who sold his farm in what is now Georgetown, in 1780, and removed to New Hampshire, spent many anxious thoughts upon his old neighbors, how they were to get along when the fast decreasing woods were all consumed; forty years afterwards he returned to this vicinity, without finding any trouble in obtaining fuel! The committee who made the last valuation of this town, report that the wood is little, if any, diminished within the last forty years.

The walnut is a beautiful tree, easily raised from the seed, and of much more rapid growth than the oak. The wood is excellent, both for fuel and timber, and the fruit is highly valued, especially among children; and it is generally a good bearer.

The elm starts readily from the seed, which ripens in great abundance, before the leaves form, every spring, and may be sown and produce a thrifty plant the same year! It is a tree of great beauty, thrives in almost every soil, is of rapid growth, and produces valuable wood, both for fuel and timber. In 1845 I brought two trees under my carriage, both of which I could carry easily upon my shoulder at once, and set them out in the street in front of my house. The largest tree girths, by measurement to day, one foot from the ground, three feet and two inches. A row of elms from the seed sixteen years ago, set from the garden on the river bank, are now, several of them, twenty feet high and six inches through.

I propose to add a few words upon Worms Injurious to Forest Trees.

Mr. Coffin, in his History of Newbury, gives an extract from the margin of an almanac of 1736, written by the Hon. Bailey Bartlett, which tallies so exactly with a similar calamity