Forest trees, for shelter, ornament and profit. A practical manual for their culture and propagation

Front matter

LIBRARY

OF THE

MASSACHUSETTS

Introduction

It is admitted that Trees are essential to civilization, and the fact is acknowledged that man cannot advance in improvement beyond the rudest form of pastoral life, withont the use of timber. The question next arises, whether or not our countrymen will go on recklessly destroying an article of absolute necessity and immense daily consumption, without regard to a source of future supply ? The rapid destruction of our forests within the past few years is really appalling. The State of New York, which, not many years since, exported great quantities of pine lumber, now obtains a supply for home consumption from abroad. The forests of Maine are said to be so completely stripped, that scarcely a pine tree of old growth is to be seen. At the present rate of consumption, the pine woods of the Northwestern States are likely

to be exhausted in less than twenty-five years. It 1* was estimated that the amount of lumber cut in 1869, in the States of Michigan, AVisconsin and Minnesota, was 3,311,372,255 feet. To obtain this quantity, 883,032 acres, or 1,380 square miles, were stripped of their trees. The destruction of hard-wood forests is likewise very rapid. There is a constantly increasing demand for yaluable kinds of timber for the manufacture of machinery, farming implements, furniture, railway cars and wooden work of every description. Millions of ties, and millions of cords of firewood, are annually required by railroads. There can be no doubt that previous to the settlement of Central and Northern Illinois, the quantity of timber was annually diminished by the ravages of fire. When these ravages were in a measure stopped, a dense growth of young trees sprang up in the scattered woodlands, and twenty years since there was more wood than at the first settlement of the country. With the introduction of railroads commenced the destruction of the forests. It may safely be estimated that two-thirds of the full-grown timber in Northern Illinois has been destroyed within eighteen years past. Tracts of thriving young wood, whose annual groAvth added at least ten per cent to its value, have been .cleared for fircAvood. The destruction still goes on. Such is the instability of our population, that woodlands which have been long preserved by their owners, sooner or later pass into the possession of those who, impatient to enjoy their value, and reckless of other considerations, ruthlessly fell them. Much of the land thus bared is of little value for any other purpose than the growth of wood, and is usually so closely pastured by domestic animals as effectually to prevent a new growth of trees.

In many of the older States the scarcity of timber is already seyerely felt. Hills and mountains which, not many years since, were crowned with wood, now rear their heads in unsightly baldness ; and streams once affording permanent water power have become useless for that purpose, or unreliable for a great part of the year. It can hardly be supposed that, with our rapidly increasing population, the consumption of timber in future years will be greatly diminished, and the supply must ere long be brought from great distances at vastly increased expense. Much will doubtless be done by substituting brick, stone and iron for wood, and by the increased use of coal for fuel; but the demand for timber will always be immense. The necessity for providing for future supplies will soon be felt, and it is to be hoped that the interest which is beginning to manifest itself in some sections of our country will deepen to a general sense of the importance of the subject.

In Germany, France, and some other countries of Europe, the forests are the property of the government. Their management has been reduced to a system, and they are guarded with care from wanton depredation. Our own government, in times past, has had ample opportunity to reserve lands wiiich, although valuable for their timber, were less desirable for settlement. Such tracts might, without great expense, be protected from devastation by agents employed for that purpose.* Soraetliiug of the sort might still be done, but there is little hope of its accomplishment. Our ]S"ational Legislature, in this respect at least, wholly destitute of statesmanlike forecast, panders to the rapacity of corporations, and hastens to squander the public domain. Most of our State legislators ignore the encouragement of tree planting altogether. Our Agricultural Societies, both State and county organizations, with few exceptions, liberally patronize the horse-jockey, while they wholly neglect the tree planter. The matter seems to depend almost entirely upon the enterprise and patriotism of individuals.

Let all, then, who have the opportunity to plant trees, awaken to a sense of the importance of the object. The evils attending a general destruction of

* Perhaps a better plan would be to transfer the woodlands to the individual States, whose authorities might be more eflScient for their preservation than the U. S. Government. The latter could not — at least did not — protect the live oak woods of Florida, which were intended for the use of the na\y. Timber growing on the public lauds has everywhere been considered fair game for everybody, and Government is said in some instances to have paid high prices for timber stolen from its own woodlands. Nearly fifty years since, when the navigation of the secondary rivers of the AVest was of more importance than since the introduction of railroads, Dr. Drake, of Cincinnati, recommended the reservation by government of tracts of woodland around the head waters of the principal streams, as a means of preventing their diminution. Probably the doctor did not anticipate the time when these reserves might become important as a source of supplies of timber. It is scarcely necessary to say that his advice was disregarded.

the forests, if uucliecked, will go on increasing with the lapse of years, until sections of our country become hopelessly sterile. The excuse that posterity has done nothing for us, is the plea of unmitigated selfishness. Americans owe more than any other nation to the toils, sacrifices and forethought of their forefathers, and it is our duty to transmit the inheritance we received from them to our descendants unimpaired by wast^ or neglect. The length of time required for the growth of timber from the seed to maturity shows conclusively that it was never designed in the order of nature for the exclusive use of a single generation.

CHAPTER II. EYILS xVTTEXDi:S^G THE DESTRUCTION OF THE

FORESTS.

G. P. Marsh, in his great work, entitled " Man and Natnre," says : " There is good reason to believe that the surface of the habitable earth, in all the climates and regions which have been the abodes of dense and civilized populations, was, with few exceptions, alreadycovered with a forest growth when it first became the home of man." Countries entirely covered with forests are fit only for the abode of savage races. As improvement advances the woods are partially felled, and the land fitted for the residence of a civilized people. But the arrangements of Nature cannot be entirely reversed with impunity. Either extreme produces the like effect — the total destruction of the forest unfits a country for the occupancy of any but a savage, or at best a nomadic population. The present condition of some of the countries around the Mediterranean Sea, once among the most productive in the world, and sustaining immense population, is graphically described in the following quotation from the above mentioned author :

" If we compare the present physical condition of the countries of which I am speaking (the Eoman Empire), with the descriptions that ancient historians and geographers have given of their fertility and general capability of ministering to human uses, we shall find that more than one-half of their whole extent — including the provinces most celebrated for the profusion and variety of their spontaneous and their cultivated products, and for the wealth and social advancement of their inhabitants — is either deserted by civilized man and surrendered to hopeless desolation, or, at least, greatly reduced, both in productiveness and population. Vast forests have disappeared from mountain spurs and ridges ; the vegetable earth accumulated beneath the trees by the decay of leaves and fallen trunks; the soil of the alpine pastures, which skirted and indented the woods, and the mould of the upland fields, are washed away ; meadows once fertilized by irrigation are waste and unproductive, because the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the ancient canals are broken, or the springs that fed them dried up ; rivers, famous in history and song, have shrunk to humble brooklets ; the willows that ornamented and protected the banks of the lesser water-courses are 'gone, and the rivulets have ceased to exist as perennial currents, because the little water that finds its way into their old channels is evaporated by the droughts of summer, or absorbed by the parched earth before it reaches the lowlands ; the beds of the brooks h aye widened into broad expanses of sand and gravel, over which, though in the hot season passed dry shod, in winter sea-like torrents thunder; the entrances of navigable streams are obstructed by sand-bars ; and harbors, once marts of an extensive commerce, are shoaled by the deposits of the rivers at whose mouths they lie."

The desolation of these countries is, undoubtedly, to be attributed mainly to the entire removal of the forests, although other causes have probably assisted in producing it. The forests of Mount Lebanon, once the source of supply for the neighboring countries, have long since disappeared; the mountain ranges of Syria, Cyrenaica, and the once populous and powerful kingdom of Persia, are now dry, barren ridges of naked rock, absolutely incapable of reproducing the woods which once covered them. Large tracts in the interior of Asia Minor, and even portions of Italy, are now a horrible desert, seamed with ravines and gullies, or piled with ridges of sand and gravel, and utterly irreclaimable to the use of man. Blanque, a French writer quoted by Marsh, speaking of the destruction of the forest in certain mountainous ]mrts of France says, that he found not a living soul in districts where he had enjoyed hospitality thirty years before ; the last inhabitants having been compelled to retreat when the last tree fell. Is there not great danger that, when the accumulating influence of causes now operating shall have had time to produce their full effect, portions of our own country may become alike uninhabitable ? The level surface and geological formation of large tracts in the Mississippi valley will, doubtless, operate to mitigate or prevent such result ; yet, when the slopes of the Kocky Mountains are stripped of their forests, and the sources of the Mississippi, and its tributaries, bared to the influence of sun and wind, who can say how great may be the evils arising from the diminution of the streams and the irregularities of the rainfall? The prospective scarcity and high price of timber, surely consequent upon the present devastation, is, of itself, a sufficient reason for planting forests ; but when to this is superadded the probable ruin of habitable districts, and deterioration of climate in the whole country, the demand on patriotism is imperative for decisive and immediate action. 2