The morning journal-courier., 1908-01-18
CREEPING BACK Nature Clothing Worn out Lands With Helpful
 Trees. ON VIRGINIA PLANTATIONS The Conquering Forest Is No Re- spector of Historical
 Places.
ON VIRGINIA PLANTATIONS

OreStS are creeping DdCk over abandoned farms in many parts of the East When wornout fields can no longer produce agricultural crops nat ure takes them back and clothes them with trees again to give them shade and rest and slowly restores fertility to the soil. This is more in evidence in the first settled parts of Virginia perhaps than anywhere else in the country, for the reach that a longer time has passed since the original for ests were cleared away and the sec opd growth has had better opportunity to take the land
 In James City county Virginia, the first permanent English colony in the United States was established 300 years ago, and in that old county the whole cycle of deforestation and re- forestation may be studied. Agricul ture for long period pushed the for ests back and plantations covered the country; then the forests came again and crowded agriculture out. A hun dred years before the Revolution to- bacco plantations occupied the best parts of tidewater Virginia and had pushed up the rivers into the Pied mont region.
 Continuous bodies of cleared land embraced thousands of acres, Nearly every large plantation had river frontage and a wharf. and ships car ried the tobacco directly to Europe and brought merchandise back It would he difficult perhaps impossible, to determine with approximate accur- acy the proportion of clear land 10 tho forests in tidewater Virginia fifty years before the Revolution, but there can he no doubt that there was more cleared land then than now
 Many great Virginia plantations of Colonial times have contracted under the pressure of surrounding forests. giving up field after field to the pine seedlings until small openings now mark the sites of former estates and all else is woods--seeond growth or third growth. The carly settlers found soil of great fertility They drew upon 1t as though 1t would last for ever It yielded tobacco and corn for generations and made fortunes for the planters. But the result was in evitable. The soil wore out A few patches of land are pointed out in James City county and also in nearby districts which have been under con tinuous cultivation for neatly or quite 300 years. Jamestown Island the site of the very earliest settlement. stil produces corn. hay and peanuts. But such places are few. The major ity of the oldest plantations have partly or wholly gone back to forest
 In travelling through that region now it is frequently possible to note the successive stages of the forests ad- vance into the cleared land In one place a body of timber may consist { of trees foot in diameter and prob ably seventy feet nigh. Their even tops and uniform size show that they
 
 seedlings took possession after the plough left off it's annual tillase. Ad- joining such wood lot another may often he seen with smaller and young CT trees. suggesting that they occupy the site of field abandoned at a later date. Near by may be seen still younger stand. In some localities the even tops of one wood lot are seen be- yond another. descending like stair steps and marking the sites of one abandoned field beyond another. each succeeding one little later and the trees are just starting from seeds blown from neighbering woods. Ii may mark the site of the last remnant of a former plantation which was al- lowed to relapse into woods because the soil was. worn out
 Few. if any. of the primeval forests remain in tidewater Virginia. but large trees of second growth exist. Svca- more more than 200 years old. and known to be of second growth. was cut this year on the site of a huild- ing burned during Bacon's Rebellion ! in 1676. and many other trees as large are growing where tobacco was culti- vated two centuries ago The fores; I in its hunger to occupy again is no TO- specter of historical places. II ig slowly taking the intrenchments a, ! Yorktown. where the British made their last stand. and the tablet mark ing the very spot where Gen. o'Hara surrendered the sword of Cornwalli. tthen an opan ield) would soon be in- visible if the axe were not frequently i called into use to clear away the en- oroaching Baltimore Sun.