3 8o
��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.
��the Appalachian range and copiously yield the rain and snow which forests love, while the soil and temperature favor the evergreen trees which afford the main timber supply. On the con- trary at the West only the hard wood varieties flourish, and none at all west of the Missouri, except a few cotton- woods and oaks along the river bottoms, until the snow-clad slopes of the Rocky mountains are reached, where the pine and spruce re-appear. Corn and wheat and grass, however, grow most luxuri- antly in their several localities, though trees are a failure there generally. Even " tree culture grants " of free lands will not produce forests. Here, at the East, every thing else is a fail- ure as the rule, the market supplies of vegetables and poultry, and the corn and tobacco crops of the intervals be- ing the exception.
That farming ever was profitable in New Hampshire was owing to the fact that the West was then undiscov- ered, or that no cheap transportation existed. To-day the railways have simply brought about the natural equilibrium, so that extensive farming here is commonly a mistake, for better success attends equal labor elsewhere. When farming began to fail, the ex- periment was next tried of turning our farms to pasturing, but the refrige- rator-car, loaded with beef raised on the great plains and fattened in the cornfields of Iowa and Illinois, induced the farmers to yield in their long battle with the trees, so constantly springing up, till they are now reluctantly begin- ning to let nature have her own way, and produce her own crop.
For one I do not regret the decline of farming in the Granite state. Its only excuse for struggling so long was that the true agricultural part of the country was inaccessible, or, at least, its products out of easy reach, and I would not mourn that the results of our railways are far-reaching and per- manent. I would rather take the knowledge that the times have forced upon us, and act on it, and substitute forestry for husbandry. If nature will
��not cooperate with us to raise corn and wheat and cattle, let us follow in her lead and raise forests of pine and spruce and hemlock, and maple and birch and ash and oak. We can buy food cheaper than we can raise it, but we can raise timber cheaper than some body else can buy, perhaps. It may be that the present price of tim- ber will not justify a large investment at once in tree culture, but it is easy to look no more than twenty years ahead and foresee our pine and spruce timber substantially exhausted, and dis- tant sources drawn upon enough to warrant the use of cheap lands ex- tensively and at once for this purpose. It has this difficulty, that thirty or forty years — a generation or more — is too long a time to work ahead with interest, but the same holds true of most great enterprises. It is also un- fortunate at the outset that in our American independence we leave every thing of this kind to purely private enterprise, which can ill afford so long an investment without a return. These difficulties may delay, but they can not thwart, tree culture, for our natural capacities not only invite, but our ne- cessities will drive us to, it if we do not anticipate them.
It is perhaps a question how largely tree planting should be done — -that is, how much assistance nature needs. There can be no reason why system- atic labor may not be used just as much on a crop of trees as on a crop of corn or wheat. Perhaps they may not need so much hoeing, but they do need as much sowing, for trees will not grow without seeds any more than corn. Doubtless maize, oats, and wheat grow wild some where, but it is not by depending upon this wild product that our granaries are filled or earth's millions fed. So in the future will it be with our timber, as it is now in the older parts of Europe, that for- ests will be raised by human fore- thought, in a systematic manner, and our unproductive New Hampshire farms, which now are simply growing up to bushes by neglect, shall have
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