-

T. Always the same system to realize a quick profit, with no forethought for the future. People wont comprehend that a forest cut at twenty years gives a larger return in money and in materiai than it would if cut four times in periods of five years or twice in those of ten. The interest of the money, do you say? And do you not reckon the enrichment of the soil, its stocking with trees and their extra value both as to quality and quantity, of any account? Alas! consider the difference between the value of a forest kept in good condition and that of one ruined by wrong management. It is as if the sheep were sheared twice instead of once a year; there would be no more wool, and, as it would be of shorter fibre, it would sell for so much less that, notwithstanding the interest of the money used between the shearings, there would yet be a loss. The woods come up again of themselves, say you? Yes; and don't the meadows grow again of themselves after they are mown? but is that a good reason for not taking care of them? The woods come up again of themselves! a fatal maxim of which those who neglect their woodland avail themselves to excuse the havoc they make and to quiet the alarm of those living in the plains about the dangers of forest destruction. To sum up: Cut your woods with. care; reserve the mature trees to re-stock the vacant spaces or else sow those spaces directly; take away what you cut at once, so as not to harm the young shoots, and, lastly, keep away the flocks, and you will have fine forests. The bad methods of management followed up to the present time have caused the deforesting of which there is complaint. The output of forage crops, of manure and of grain is diminished in proportion. Every one thus suffers from the greed and selfishness of these unwise proprietors, who ruin their woodland under the pretext of speculation, and for the sake of a temporary improvement in their finances prepare ruin for their children, who, too late, will in their own persons afford a proof of the truth of this maxim: A country without wood is a house without a roof; no peace there! Sun, wind, rain and cold keep every one in a turmoil.

M. P. —- The parliament exists no longer, but to make up for that, the Durance,* and especially the mistral,† have redoubled their violence. I don't believe your hedges of maize and cane can stand before it very long.

* A river in Provence, liable to frequent freshets.
A cold north-west wind.

T. That is where you are mistaken; a barrier of plank or a wall might be swept away or upset, while these hedges remain fast. Opposing to the wind an elastic obstacle, they overcome its force by dividing it. When a tempest beats upon the denuded flanks of a mountain it will shake the rocks, catch up the stones, and overturn isolated trees; far from calming it, the obstacles redoubling its fury, it will rebound and form in the valleys those waterspouts which devastate the crops. But when it strikes a wooded slope each tree, each branch, will bend under the force of the wind, and will check its force by its elasticity; the hurricane will be sifted and absorbed by the woods, so that there will be no counter-blast in the neighborhood. Upon a plain the effect will be the same; a screen of trees will suffice to check and prevent the ravages of a violent wind. You know how the great currents of air cause rains, storms and abrupt changes of temperature so hurtful to crops. Very well, the woods, whether located upon the plain, the shore of the sea, upon the summits or the slopes of the mountains, are the only means of preventing these sudden changes from cold to heat. It is not without good reason that nature has placed in the plains and valleys a rich and delicate vegetation; the mountains should afford them shelter, and the slopes, originally wooded, should furnish it abundant springs, and at the same time give it protection from the fury of the winds, and whenever cultivation and clearing have laid bare the slopes, the valleys have most severely felt the effects of the change. Nothing is so good as the coppice or the grown timber as a shelter for the cultivated fields, especially against the winds.

FOREST DESTRUCTION AND ITS RESULTS.

We have cut and burned our forests with reckless wastefulness. It would seem as though our great anxiety had been to get rid of them as soon as possible. We have consumed our patrimony with spendthrift prodigality. Never was a land more magnificently supplied with timber adapted to the manifold uses of civilized and industrial life than was our own at the beginning of its settlement. Now little of it remains, and at the present rate of consumption in a few years it will be practically extinguished.* In view of the

*The entire annual consumption of wood for building and manufacturing purposes is estimated but little short of 30,000,000,000 feet. This of itself must show the enormous destruction of forests going on in the United States and the serious result a loss of its timber must have upon its future welfare.

facts we may well ask if something cannot be done to stay the process of destruction.*

Of all quarters of the world America was originally the most thickly wooded with primeval forest, "but it is now doubtful,” says Marsh, "if any one State of the United States, except, perhaps, Oregon, has more timber than it ought permanently to preserve." Our white pine is practically gone and our yellow pine will, at the present rate of cutting, disappear in a few years. Said the celebrated botanist, Hooker, when he made a trip through the United States, a few years ago: "The devastation of the forests in California is proceeding at a rate which is utterly incredible except to an eye-witness; " and now the California newspapers tell us that there will soon be an end of the far-famed redwood forestsof that State. There are no fewer than nineteen lumber companies now engaged in cutting down the "big trees," and all the mills are in constant work, as the demand for the wood is practically unlimited. The country will, therefore, be cleared in a few years, for nobody makes even an attempt at replanting.†

"It is certain," says Marsh, "that a desolation like that which has overwhelmed many once beautiful and fertile regions of Europe awaits an important part of the territory of the United States, unless prompt measures are taken to check the action of destructive causes already in operation. * * * Fortunately,

some of the American States still retain the ownership of great tracts of primitive woodland. The State of New York, for example, has in its northeastern counties a vast extent of territory *** where the soil is generally poor and the value of the land for agricultural purposes, therefore, very small, and few purchases are made for any other purpose than to strip the soil of its timber. * * It is desirable that some large and easily accessible region of American soil should remain, as far as possible, in its primitive condition, at once a museum for the instruction of the student, a garden for the recreation of the lover of nature, and an asylum where indigenous tree and humble plant that loves the shade, and

*

* See Report of the U. S. Commission of Agriculture, 1883.

The report of the California State Board of Forestry puts the limit to which redwood promises to last at from seventy-five to one hundred years. The waste, it says, has been enormous. The total consumption for 1885 is estimated at 215,000,000 feet, board measure

fish and fowl and four-footed beast may dwell and perpetuate their kind in the enjoyment of such imperfect protection as the laws of a people jealous of restraint can afford them. The immediate loss to the public treasury from the adoption of this policy would be inconsiderable. The forest alone, economically managed, would without injury and even with benefit to its permanence and growth soon yield a regular income larger than the present value of its fee. The collateral advantages of the preservation of these forests would be far grearer. Nature threw up those mountains and clothed them with lofty woods that they might serve as a reservoir to supply with perennial waters the thousand rivers and rills that are fed by the rains and snows of the Adirondacks, and as a screen for the fertile plains of the central counties against the chilling blasts of the north wind, which meet no other barrier in their sweep from the Arctic pole. * * * The felling of the Adirondack forests would involve, ultimately, for northern and central New York consequences similar to those which have resulted from the laying bare of the southern and western declivities of the French Alps and the spurs, ridges and detached peaks in front of them."

A

Besides the destruction of timber by fires and by the premature cutting of trees, and heedless waste of all sorts, the annual consumption of timber for legitimate business purposes is far greater, probably twice as much, as its annual production by growth. rapidly growing population and an increasing demand for wood in mechanical industries makes, every year, greater and greater demands on our forests. Take the matter of railroad ties for example. The large and rapidly increasing demand made upon our forests in supplying timber for ties alone is shown by Prof. Egleston in his report on forestry, issued in 1884, by the following facts.

There are now in use in this country about 150,000 miles of railroads, which have required 396,000,000 ties all the wood supplied by 3,390,000 acres, an area larger than that of the States of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Estimating that ties need to be renewed on an average once in seven years, there must be drawn from the forests annually 56,571,428 ties, requiring the timber growing on 565,714 acres. Allowing thirty years as the time necessary to produce trees of proper dimensions for ties, it will require 16,971,420 acres of woodland to be kept constantly growing as a kind of railroad reserve, in order to supply the annual needs of existing roads.

This constitutes an area larger than the States of New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts combined, or of the Sates of New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware, with the addition of Connecticut. It is more than four per cent of the total area of woodland in the United States, exclusive of the territories, and three per cent of the area of the States and territories together. With the rapid extension of our railroad systems these figures will be proportionally increased.

Until recent years, it has seemed to most people as though the supplies of wood could never come to an end, and that our natural forest wealth formed a kind of universal and inexhaustible mine, which it would be impossible to exhaust. Many founding their opinions upon the ground that from the earliest period the world has alway easily found all the wood necessary for its use, and this without having to depend upon the discovery of new forests, would pretend that it was ridiculous to borrow trouble so far ahead, as, in all events, there would be provided, in some way or another, the means of avoiding the dangers that they considered as only imaginary. While we are not alarmists and are not of those who predict an impending forest famine, and an immediate precipitation of the direful consequences that have overwhelmed tree-stripped countries, there, nevertheless, exists a most threatening danger, which has already been often pointed out with energy, and against which the general welfare requires us to adopt on every side the most effectual and decisive measures, that should be executed with activity and perseverance.

Let us see how our supplies stand. We have, as our only data, the census of different periods; and the returns of 1880 show, that of our States and territories, nine had reduced their woodlands to below ten per cent; five to between ten and twenty per cent; eight to from twenty to thirty per cent; eleven to from thirty to forty per cent; and four to from forty to fifty per cent, when this census was taken. In ten States of the south and southwest, the proportion was fifty per cent or more, and in the whole United States, the woodlands occupied thirty-five per cent of the whole reported area. In the State of New York the census shows the amount of land in farms; distinguishing the amount in cultivation, in pasturage, in woodland and in waste land (the latter being old fields, land on which no wood is growing), and lands not included in the preceding classes. Leaving out Kings and New York