clump and their size as taken by Cary, June 23, 1894, is as follows: I tree 22 inches in diameter 4 feet from ground. The last two were younger trees which had come up on the side adjoining deciduous trees. Hon. I. P. Berry, who is a practical gentleman of excellent judgment and considerable experience in clearing forest lots, thinks these 146 trees would make 50,000 feet of round or rough edged inch boards. E. E. Berry, Esq., of house of representatives, who has had some experience in such matters, surveyed and plotted this lot some four or five years ago, and made a careful estimate of these trees and then calculated that they would then saw out 45,000 feet of such boards. Fifty thousand feet would beat the rate of 74,000 feet to the acre. Reckoning these trees as 50 years of age (which is above their average age) and it makes nearly 1,500 feet of inch boards per acre for every year of their age. Mr. Berry estimates that he has in fire-wood, stakes, poles, shingle stuff, and timber cut out in thinning an amount just about equal to that now standing. The shingles alone amounted to 5,000. As it hardly pays to cut and market white pine wood from this lot I am not sure but that the thinnings from this lot have been worth about as much as the whole plot would now be worth had it never been thinned or pruned at all, while the lot is worth several times as much as it would have been had it been left alone to nature's sole care. Since writing the above I have had the logs from these two pines sawed by a thick circular saw into waney edged inch boards. The smaller tree made 136 feet of boards, and the larger 364 feet. My estimate of the yearly growth, besides what has been cut out in thinning, is just about 1,000 feet a year per acre from the time they started from the seed. Having been repeatedly told that for every limb you cut off from a pine tree you would have a rotten knot, I wish to say that the four largest logs in these two pines had about 100 limbs cut from them at their several prunings, during the last fifteen or twenty years, and that there is neither rot nor the sign of a rot in either knots or any other part of the boards. Such tests cost me time and money, but I do hope by them to find the facts, and stop the injurious and provoking untruths. Of course anyone could cut enough live limbs at one time from any tree to check its growth and be likely to cause rots where the limbs were live and large. How can gentlemen with eyes and sense look at these facts and pictures or examine the groves which they represent and still contend that nature is the best forester; that man cannot aid her in the growing of a crop of lumber, notwithstanding that he can by his assistance cause her to immensely increase and improve all the other useful crops; that our three million acres of forest land cannot be made to grow the yearly demand upon it of 100 feet of timber board measure per year per acre; that the four hundred and ninety million acres of our country's forests, outside of Alaska, cannot grow yearly the 61 feet board measure per acre required to supply our nation's annual demand of thirty billion feet, that our rain and our rivers, our farm crops, and factory products stare destruction in the face, and that our only salvation is to let our old trees stand and occupy while rotting the ground long enough to grow a good timber crop; let in this state our 160,000 acres of waste land lie idle, for man cannot assist nature in growing timber, oh, no! and send our hard earned dollars to other countries for forest products lest our state and the country become a "Gehenna of a sand desert" (see Oswald in North American Review December, 1887), and the believed purpose of our Heavenly Father and Christ in his mission be pretty much frustrated by Patrick and Jean smiting the forests and converting this beautiful work of the Almighty Architect into a Gehennain Sahara! With nearly eight acres of forest to every man, woman, and child in our country, we are officially informed that we are yearly using and destroying twice the annual production of forest products, and, if this be true, at our long continued increase of population, before our school children arrive at middle age there will not be land enough in our country were it all forests to supply at present rates our people. Well Matthus, one of the great classical scholars of the University of Cambridge, England, a brilliant man of vast learning, won a world-wide reputation by proving that less children must be born or starvation must result. He died sixty years ago to-day. Probably in no other sixty years were ever nearly as many children born, and wheat has fallen to fifty cents a bushel! Exeter was settled in the woods in 1638, and in 1640 her settlers began to make laws about the cutting of timber, and made more stringent ones the next year. It must surprise the thirty-seven heads of families who divided the land here among themselves (ten of them receiving only four acres and twenty rods each, and only the minister as many as eighty acres), if they could come back and see five or six thousand people here, and know that the cutting of wood and timber has been going on here for more than two hundred and fifty years, and find wood is even now of little value on the stump, and considerable timber is still standing. Abundant and cheap as wheat is, we have only enough to last our people a few months. What, are the people to starve within a few months? No. For men are to go to work and assist nature to grow another crop. The same, but in a less degree, is true in regard to our forest crop. 1. The first principle I wish to inculcate is, that man can assist nature in the growing of a crop of timber, as it is universally known that he assists her in the growing of all other crops. 2. That in order to secure the most profitable crops from the land the proper number of plants must be grown-that there may be too large or too small a number to the acre. Ten bushels of grass seed sown or of corn planted on an acre will not produce the most profitable crop, and neither will two hundred apple trees or a thousand timber trees grown upon an acre produce the most profitable crop of apples or timber. 3 That trees grown separately, as in open lands, have the |