THE VALUE OF OUR FORESTS. 183 



ence and art and governmental authority are invoked to unite their 

 powers for the purpose of remedying the evil results. 



We are treadins^ the same course that other nations have trod. 

 Says Humboldt, " Men, in all climates, seem to bring upon future gen- 

 erations two calamities at once a want of fuel and a scarcity of water." 

 With our comparatively sparse population and our continental stretch 

 of forest, it has hardly entered our minds that we could be improvi- 

 dent in the use of our woodlands. It has seemed to us that we had 

 enough, and that for ever ; and so we have consumed the forests with 

 a recklessness which has perhaps never been surpassed. We have even 

 sacrificed them by carelessness, or in the wantonness of a temporary 

 greed, utterly regardless of the future. Forests which have been the 

 growth of centuries have been swept off in a day. The lumberman 

 cuts the few noblest trees, or takes only the choicest portions of them 

 for the purposes of the arts, and burns the rest to ashes, thereby pre- 

 cluding another growth upon the spot. The miner does the same, cut- 

 ting off the already sparse forests, and taking no pains to replace them. 

 And so it is happening that our forest area, particularly in the more 

 recently settled portions of the country, is rapidly diminishing. The 

 opening of the great agricultural regions of the Ohio and the Missis- 

 sippi Valleys, with their superior attractiveness, has lessened the value 

 of much of the Eastern lands for the purpose of tillage, and, in some 

 portions of New England particularly, what were once corn-fields and 

 pastures, have been abandoned by the cultivator and a growth of trees 

 has come in. But as a whole our forest area has been diminishing for 

 a long time, and never more rapidly than within the last decade. Se- 

 rious evils have already come from this wasting of the woods, but 

 they have been spread over so wide a stretch of territory that atten- 

 tion has not been called to them in a way to arouse general attention 

 or lead to their remedy. Our streams have a diminished flow of water, 

 while they are marked by alternations of floods and droughts, much 

 greater than formerly prevailed. They are not navigable for so long 

 distances, nor for so large a class of boats, as they once were, nor do 

 they furnish so large or so uniform a supply for the mill-wheels as they 

 did in earlier times. Changes of climate have also resulted, affecting 

 the health of the people and the productiveness of the fields. These 

 effects have been noticed in a multitude of cases. But, in most in- 

 stances, they have been regarded as isolated and local occurrences, 

 and have not been attributed to tlieir true cause. 



In some of our Western States which are almost treeless, the bene- 

 ficial influence of forests has been forced upon the attention of the 

 people. It has been found that life may not be worth living, though 

 on the richest soil, if that be all. A writer of acknowledged authority, 

 in a lecture before the Illinois Industrial University, speaking of the 

 importance of trees as a shelter of crops from injurious winds, says, "I 

 think it maybe safely estimated that an average of one twelfth part of 



