Will you allow me to make a few remarks on a subject of no small importance to the nation ? The lack of trees on our vast and cheerless prairies has come to be felt as a great national want. Forestry is now a leading topic, and rightly so, for as the population increases wood and timber will be more and more in demand. Are we not losing time inquiring what trees to plant and then drawing out a lengthy argument about them?

The government has given encouragement, and this ought to be a stimulus for great exertion. We will not talk now of improving the landscape, nor of drawing water from the clouds, nor of making the air more pure by the free distribution of healthy gases and exhalations. The absorption of noxious carbonic gases which trees inhale, the domestic uses of wood, and the enhancing of the value of every farm - even in a national point of view - to have five, ten or twenty acres of good woodland on it, can also be passed by now; but it is apparent, millions of trees can be planted and grown by the people themselves, cheaply and quickly, compared with the present movement, and which will make future generations bless the present one if it only acts on the hint given in these suggestions.

Seeds, of the kinds found most suitable, except a mere few, can be collected in the Eastern and Middle States - they are cheap and plenty and made up in one two, four or five dollar packages by seedsmen and nurserymen, with a printed paper around each package giving full directions for sowing and management in the seed bed. The Western farmer who can not afford to buy a large quantity of nursery stock, will very quickly see the point, write for, and order those packages, and will cheerfully sow and care for the seeds.

This appears to me to be the cheapest and best, I might say almost the only way the desolate looking prairie can be made to "bloom" and look like an extended forest country.

Chambersburg, Trenton, N. J.