FORESTS AND FRUIT-GROWING. 201 



remains, and the injury to fruit-growing would be still greater ; and so 

 far as this result would have an effect, it would be to depreciate the 

 market value of land. What this region especially needs is a protec- 

 tion of woodland against the cold westerly and southwesterly winds 

 to cooperate with the benign influence of the lake in other regards. 

 The more forest to the south of this belt of shore-land the better. The 

 more frequently blocks and belts of woodland intervene throughout 

 its entire extent for immediate local shelter and a general screen against 

 westerly winds, the better for the farming and fruit growing interests 

 of this region. 



But, so long as it pays an immediate profit to cut down the forest, 

 it will be done. It is not within the province of legislation to stop it. 

 There is no hope from voluntary concert of action. A certain per- 

 centage of timbered lands might be exempted from taxation ; but this 

 innovation, though talked of, is slow in coming about. 1 To a certain 

 extent tree-destruction should be offset by tree-planting. The planter 

 might not receive his profits so quickly as the destroyer, but never- 

 theless, wherever timber is likely soon to bcome scarce, and that is 

 almost everywhere, profits would be sure to accrue from direct sales 

 as well as from the value thus added to the land generally and, 

 besides the profits in dollars and cents, that accruing from the con- 

 sciousness of having done a beneficent action. 



There are a great many purposes for which timber, and timber only 

 can be used ; and for these purposes it should be religiously conserved. 

 I once heard a gentleman say, " I don't worship my timber ; " he sac- 

 rificed it to gain, in a perfectly legitimate manner it is true. Still the 

 writer must say that he has a sincere respect for the " worship of 

 timber ; " it is not a bad kind of religion, so far as it goes. 



Immense quantities of timber are slaughtered every year for fuel, 

 and this, too, in a country where there is more coal than anywhere else 

 in the world. There is but one way to stop this branch of the destroy- 

 ing process, and that is by increasing railroad facilities so as to make 

 our coal-fields accessible to every part of the country. Cheap coal 

 will save the timber. When no longer consumed in the millions of 

 household fires in city and country, or in furnaces for the driving 

 power of locomotives and mills, great will be the saving of timber for 

 the necessary purposes for which timber must be used, and for the 

 protection of our cultivated fields and gardens. 



The burning of Chicago must make an immediate draft on timbered 

 lands for certain purposes of building for which timber is still largely 

 used. But this great fire, in proving the absolute necessity of building 

 cities of brick, stone, and iron, will operate eventually to the saving of 

 timber and the longer continuance of the protection which our northern 



1 Only Missouri, Nebraska, and Illinois, have legislative enactments to encourage the 

 planting of timber. New York, Massachusetts, and California, do something in the same 

 direction through their agricultural societies. 



