THE VALUE OF OUR FORESTS. 181 



have our spring floods, often so destructive to property as well as 

 life. 



There is another aspect in which the forests are to be regarded, 

 but in which we have hardly begun to consider them properly, and 

 that is the economical one, as the continuous producers of fuel, and 

 of lumber for use in the mechanic arts. With our boundless area of 

 cheap lands, covered originally with forests to such an extent that 

 the trees have been regarded as an obstruction to agriculture, and so 

 to be swept away often by fire rather than to await the slower proc- 

 ess of the axe, we have thought little of the forest as anything of 

 permanent value. Added to this the practically unlimited area of our 

 coal-fields has served to prevent any apprehension of loss from the 

 destruction of the forests. That there is ever to come a time when 

 we may suffer from a scarcity of wood for fuel or for the arts, hardly 

 seems to have entered many minds. 



Very different is the settled feeling in other countries in respect 

 to the value of the forests. When in some portions of Europe the 

 peasant has to travel miles on foot to bring home, as the result of a 

 whole day's labor, an armful of wood to burn, and can afford to bake 

 bread but once in six months because fuel is so scarce and dear ; and 

 when England, with only four or five per cent, of woodland, is gravely 

 and anxiously figuring out the time when her coal-fields will be ex- 

 hausted, and her vast manufacturing interest will be at the expense 

 of purchasing its fuel from other countries or suffer inevitable decline 

 or extinction the importance of the forest, in an economical as well as 

 in a political point of view, becomes at once apparent. The coal-fields 

 are not growing, and never can be made to grow again. They were 

 deposited ages since, once for all, and, so far as we can see, are to 

 have no successors or substitutes but the living trees, following each 

 other from generation to generation. 



It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the European nations, 

 having learned its value by its loss in greater or less measure, see 

 the forest to be an important factor in all that constitutes national 

 life and comfort, and have given it a place in their thoughts and 

 in their practical arrangements which we have not in ours. It is not 

 surprising that they should establish schools for the special purpose 

 of teaching all that relates to the growth and preservation of the 

 forest, that they should make it a matter of national and political con- 

 cern, and that the literature of the subject should be so extensive that 

 it is estimated that from the German press alone as many as a hundred 

 volumes and pamphlets on forestry, in some of its aspects, are issued 

 annually. 



Germany has given much attention to her forests ever since the 

 days of Charlemagne, who is said to have afforested the Ardennes and 

 established the forest of Osnabrtick. The sovereigns of Germany 

 have treated the woodlands not merely as preserves for game and 



