The thin diameter, and is about forty years of age. Had nature when she started this tree, started forty-seven others at equal distance on this acre, there might now have been forty-eight such worthless trees covering the entire acre. Those who have eyes to see have noticed many similar acres of pines and other worthless tree bushes. Had man or nature planted three thousand more pines on this acre when this one was planted, by proper thinning there might now have been two hundred or more trees sixty feet in height, and a foot in diameter one foot from the ground. nings cut out would have been worth far more than forty-eight trees like that represented in picture No. 1, and those left at once valuable and beautiful. By commencing early and breaking off the ends of these limbs, and following this checking of the growth of these limbs at proper times by trimming off a row of them, this lone tree might have been made to have grown mill logs, but this is altogether too expensive a way to be practiced to any considerable extent in the growing of timber; scattering pines are poor property. I found the taller of these pines are forty-five feet in height. The one cut had thirty-one annual rings, and was four and a half inches in diameter four feet from the ground. As there were thirty-four rows of limbs, I am inclined to the opinion that we failed to count three of the annual rings in this tree on account of their fineness. These trees are upon better land than any others shown in the pictures, and had they been properly thinned from time to time, would, I think, have been nine or ten inches in diameter, and fifty feet in height. As logs are to each other as the squares of their diameters, and as the square of four and one half is twenty and one fourth, and the square of nine is eighty-one, the butt logs of these trees ought to have been four times as large as they are. Thus by thinning there would have been a four-fold gain in the butt log, a gain in the height of the tree, and a great gain in the value of each cubic foot of contents, because pine wood of sufficient size for saw logs is worth much more per cubic foot than that which is only large enough for wood. Hon. J. B. Walker, of Concord, says that in his city a cord of pine mill logs is worth four cords of pine cord wood, of course logs free from knots and other defects will bring much more. Pine wood where I grow my pines has no market value, and the same is true where much of the timber grows in this state. But by thinning, you can not only get timber in the time which, if left unthinned the trees would only be fit for wood or small shingle stuff, but it is a fact demonstrated over and over again, that trees which have been properly thinned while growing, make more wood to the acre when cut and corded up than do those left unthinned. Many of these trees are dead, and none much alive or thrifty. I have known such a thicket at a hundred years of age to have no fair sized mill log in it. I have a section of a pine cut on land of Mr. Gerrish, supposed to have been ninety years in growing, and the tree was only 3 inches in diameter it had been so shaded and crowded. I have a part section of a lone pine which was 3 feet in diameter, and this diameter was grown in fifty-four years, as is shown by the remarkably distinct annual rings. Counting the dead and dying, with the stunted, there are about 4,550 trees to the acre (shown in picture No. 2), and in size from those too small for fishing rods to light fence poles. It appears from measurements, and counting of the annual rings of spruce cut in the native grown untouched forests in the Adirondack region of northern New York, the seven largest trees of twelve hundred examined averaged 280 years of age, and a diameter of 28 inches, and a height of 71 feet; and the ten smallest averaged 133 years of age, with a diameter of 13 inches, and a height of 61 2-10 feet. Upon examination of nineteen of these trees as they stood in the reports submitted to Hon. W. F. Fox, superintendent of forests for New York, and for whose courtesy I render thanks, I found that they averaged 13 2-10 inches in diameter at three feet from the ground, and that it had taken them rising 25 years from their start to become two inches in diameter, and at least 50 years to attain the diameter four inches. By the time they were 70 years of age they had got their tops into the sunshine above the deciduous growth surrounding them, and soon their annual rings doubled in thickness, notwithstanding the greater circumference each ring covered. By the judicious girdling or cutting away from time to time, of some of the worthless trees which crowded |