Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1878-04-23
miscellaneous.
TREES AND OTHER THINGS.

That inherent and admirable conserya-
tism which distinguishes the rural New
England mind is liable to degenerate into
fear of, or dislike to, innovation, which
are impediments in the way of progress.
The farmer who finds his land gradually
wearing out, whose children have gone to
the cities, who cannot make up his mind
TO pay the wages demanded In these days,
nor see it TO be profitable if he could
whose daughters work less and spend
more money than ever his wife did who,
in short, perceives that to keep up his
farm he must draw money from the bank,
feels that he is equally indisposed and in
competent to enter upon what seems TO
him a new life. All over New England
farms are offered for sale at low prices
the old are not replaced by a new genera
ton of American farmers, and the hon.
ored acres on which were raised family
of boys and girls now in active and useful
life, lie worthless or are in the hands OF
Woodworking and economical foreigners.
If this degeneration OF the soil is readi-
lv accounted for, and the cost of its resus-
citation admitted, it is quite as true that TO
the State it is an important matter wheth-
er there shall be any and a successful at.
tempt to restore these barren acres to
profitable service. Wealth comes in the
first place from mother earth from TIL
lage; the first settler raises all that he
lives upon, and the surplus is capital.
Now, in New England very large pro-
portion of this source Of rches-the land
is wholly or mainly utilized. To bring
it back to productiveness would add to the
yearly gains of the State. The reaction
in favor o farming is doing something in
this respect. The Massachusetts, Connec-
ticut and Vermont farmers are proving
that the man who is willing to work, and
possesses intelligence, need not leave New
England to obtain all that the farmer
works for, or need work for. That is to
say, competence, an education for his
children. and the influences and aids of
healthy state of society.
1t need hardly be SAID that no safer in
vestmtnt can be made by the man
who owns land already than the i'm
proyement OF his land in an intelligent
way. Nor can there be tor him who
retains, or has returned to his love
of nature, any more thoroughly en-
joyable life than the ruraIist's. Among
the many PROJECTS which have been dis
cussed for the renovation Ol New England
hills aud valleys, that ot tree-planting has
now aud then been brought forward, and
| he Secretary Of the Connecticut State
Board OF Agriculture, who has been trav-
elling i'll Europe, has just contributed 10
1t some new, useful and encouraging in
formation. While our readers are con-
versaut in Il general way with this topic,
it may yet surprise some of them to find.
| as an violence of what other nations think
ot, and have done in this matter that in Ger
manythere have been published twenty-five
hundred volumns upon forestry, and that
| nearly the same attention has been paid
to it in France and Span. As to Scotland
| it is common Information that the "plan-
tations" are as assiduously cultivated as
the arabic land. and that in the highlands
millions of trees have been planted, and
| cut in the second generation with an i'm
| mense pecuniary gain.
Very naturally the inquiry will suggest
itself to the cautious farmer whether
certain cultivation may not be profitable
inone place or country, and not in anoth-
er, and he will remember the Moras Null
ticaulus fever OF forty years ago; he will
say that the Germans can make sugar out
of beets, and we have not yet done it to
advantage; that the Connecticut farmers
are disappointed in their expectations
| from tobacco, and that he who plants
| trees may never live TO see them grow to
any size. All of which is pertinent. But
none the less is it true that much of our
New England soil will grow trees, and
nothing else now; that the demand for
| wood and timber will continue as long as
| The world stands: that wood lots are val
liable anywhere in New England, and that
10y Il series OF years OF wood-growth much
OF the soil now idle would be reclaimed
without other expenditure to fertility.
That the value of the water courses and
the beauty of the landscape would be en-
hanced is true. The one thing. however.
which must lie at the bottom OF all pro-
gress in this and other rural directions,
is a fuller appreciation of what may be
gained by new methods. The old ways
| are like The old highways, insufficient tor
present needs Let the experiment be
made as gradually as one likes only let it
| ha ,,,,la D,o,.;JsDce .ToUy0uI