case. One of the principal agents in this planting, the red squirrels,
were all the while curiously inspecting me, while I was inspecting their
plantation. Some of the little oaks had been browsed by cows, which
resorted to this wood for shade.

After seven or eight years, the hard woods evidently find such a locality
unfavorable to their growth, the pines being allowed to stand. As an
evidence of this, I observed a diseased red-maple twenty-five feet long,
which had been recently prostrated, though it was still covered with green
leaves, the only maple in any position in the wood.

But although these oaks almost invariably die if the pines are not cut
down, it is probable that they do better for a few years under their
shelter than they would anywhere else.

The very extensive and thorough experiments of the English, have at length
led them to adopt a method of raising oaks almost precisely like this,
which somewhat earlier had been adopted by nature and her squirrels here;
they have simply rediscovered the value of pines as nurses for oaks. The
English experimenters seem early and generally, to have found out the
importance of using trees of some kind, as nurse-plants for the young
oaks. I quote from Loudon what he describes as "the ultimatum on the
subject of planting and sheltering oaks,"--"an abstract of the practice
adopted by the government officers in the national forests" of England,
prepared by Alexander Milne.

At first some oaks had been planted by themselves, and others mixed with
Scotch pines; "but in all cases," says Mr. Milne, "where oaks were planted
actually among the pines, and surrounded by them, [though the soil might
be inferior,] the oaks were found to be much the best." "For several years