A Canadian correspondent sends us the following from a local paper, and asks if we can supply the information desired:

"Within our own Dominion many varieties of useful lumber are nearly extinct, and others rapidly becoming so. The white pine is one of these, and it is about it that a little information is required from some of our readers.

"A gentleman in this city has received a communication from the United States Department of Agriculture, requesting some information about this noble tree. It is impossible to get any information on anything connected with forestry in any of our government departments, there being none there, so we ask any of our readers who may have any knowledge of the habits of this tree to communicate with the Capital.

" The information desired has principally to do with the growth of the tree, its size, at a specified age, four and a half feet from the ground, and the kind of soil in which it flourishes.

" For instance, a tree being taken for observation, it is desired to know whether it is natural, planted, or seedling growth; also its diameter four and a half feet above ground, its height, age, and vigor. It is also desired to know something of the surroundings, and the aspect and configuration of the district in which the tree has grown".

[A tree recently cut down near Philadelphia, was 23 years old, had been twice transplanted, once when three years old and once when ten years old, when it was left to grow in ordinarily good farm land composed of a slightly sandy clay, at an elevation of about 300 feet above tide water. It was 40 feet high, and 11 inches thick. This is an average height of 20 inches, and an increase of half an inch in thickness, yearly. Other trees were growing near all this time, but not so close as to do more than barely touch by the lower branches when it was cut down. This may be taken as a fair average growth for the White Pine under any and all circumstances. When the seed is sown, anyhow, and the trees suffered to struggle, anyhow - or left with underbrush to struggle with the trees for some of the food the tree ought to have, - or if the tree be planted in soil " too rocky or too poor to be of any other use but for timber planting," as is so often recommended for tree planters to choose, it would be much longer.

We may safely put it down for a fact that a hundred acres of White Pine set about 12 or 14 feet apart on good farming ground, cultivated the first few years with corn or potatoes if desirable, the chief object being to make the ground pay for keeping down the weeds, would give in 25 years, 25,000 or 30,000 logs three feet in circumference. In 50 years of good forest culture after the great forest famine of which we hear so much shall have arrived, we can have the country reforested with logs six feet in circumference.

It would pay to start it now; pay any individual speculator as an investment, if there were any foundation for the near scarcity so often foretold. A company that would plant a thousand acres knowing that it would be worth a gold mine at 50 years, could always sell its shares to advantage with every year of approach towards that fiftieth year. The only reason it is not done now is because no one who has money to invest believes in the statements made about the absolute scarcity at the end of the half century. - Ed. G. M].