2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



by fires as often as once in twenty years. In' the southern part of the 

 State, so frequent are the fires and so wide-spread, the risk has made 

 woodland less salable than formerly. Though nine tenths of this 

 region is wooded, there is little large timber to be found, and lumber 

 is largely brought from distant places. Droughts are becoming more 

 frequent, and these increase the exposure to fire. Thus the partial con- 

 sumption of the forests makes their further consumption the more cer- 

 tain and rapid. 



And what is true in this limited area is measurably true through- 

 out the country. That our forests are being destroyed with alarming 

 rapidity admits of no question, and it is probably true that fires con- 

 sume more than are cut down by the axe of the lumberman and the 

 wood-chopper. 



Our neighbors in Canada keep themselves better informed in regard 

 to the condition of their forests than we are in regard to our own. The 

 Commissioner of Crown Lands, in the province of Quebec, in his re- 

 port of 1871, speaking of the preservation of timber-lands, says : "The 

 most formidable agent in the destruction of our forests is, certainly, 

 fire. All the most active operations in lumbering which have taken 

 place since the settlement of the country, and all those which are likely 

 to take place for the next twenty years, have not caused, and will not 

 cause, to our forests so much devastation as this one destroying ele- 

 ment has effected up to the present time." In a report on forestry 

 and the forests of Canada, by a member of the Dominion Council of 

 Agriculture, in 1877, it is estimated that more pine-timber has been 

 destroyed by fire than has been cut down and taken out by the lum- 

 bermen. 



The combined effect of fires and the wasteful consumption of our 

 forests in the production of lumber and for other purposes, and the 

 almost total neglect to protect their growth, have resulted in the 

 diminution of our area of woodland to such an extent as justly to occa- 

 sion alarm on many accounts. In California, for instance, the Presi- 

 dent of the State Board of Agriculture reported, several years ago, 

 that within twenty years at least a third of the native supply of ac- 

 cessible timber had been cut off or destroyed, and that forty years 

 would exhaust the forests. This estimate was made without taking 

 into account the increased demands upon the forests which would be 

 made by the increase of population and the growth of manufacturing 

 industries. 



Similar reports come from other States and Territories, though in 

 those which were originally heavily wooded the destruction of the 

 trees may not have gone so far as to produce a scarcity of lumber, or 

 to increase its price to such an extent as to be burdensome. In some 

 parts of the country, also, particularly in the older States, it is proba- 

 ble that the growth of the woods has kept pace with their destruction. 

 Yet of the country .as a whole it may be said, without hesitation, that 



