past, the plan pursued has been to plant the inclosures with Scotch pines
only, [a tree very similar to our pitch-pine,] and when the pines have got
to the height of five or six feet, then to put in good strong oak plants
of about four or five years' growth among the pines,--not cutting away any
pines at first, unless they happen to be so strong and thick as to
overshadow the oaks. In about two years, it becomes necessary to shred the
branches of the pines, to give light and air to the oaks, and in about two
or three more years to begin gradually to remove the pines altogether,
taking out a certain number each year, so that, at the end of twenty or
twenty-five years, not a single Scotch pine shall be left; although, for
the first ten or twelve years, the plantation may have appeared to contain
nothing else but pine. The advantage of this mode of planting has been
found to be that the pines dry and ameliorate the soil, destroying the
coarse grass and brambles which frequently choke and injure oaks; and that
no mending over is necessary, as scarcely an oak so planted is found to
fail."

Thus much the English planters have discovered by patient experiment, and,
for aught I know, they have taken out a patent for it; but they appear not
to have discovered that it was discovered before, and that they are merely
adopting the method of Nature, which she long ago made patent to all.
She is all the while planting the oaks amid the pines without our
knowledge, and at last, instead of government officers, we send a party of
wood-choppers to cut down the pines, and so rescue an oak forest, at which
we wonder as if it had dropped from the skies.

As I walk amid hickories, even in August, I hear the sound of green
pig-nuts falling from time to time, cut off by the chickaree over my head.
In the fall, I notice on the ground, either within or in the neighborhood
of oak woods, on all sides of the town, stout oak twigs three or four