782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tively small State of Massachusetts more than 14,000 acres of forest, 

 valued at more than $100,000, have been recently consumed by fire in 

 a single year ; and in Pennsylvania 685,738 acres of forest are reported 

 as burned over in 1880, with a loss of more than $3,000,000. We shall 

 learn that the axe and the flames together are consuming our forests 

 so rapidly that we are threatened with great evils on this account in 

 the not distant future. Trees are quickly felled and quickly burned ; 

 they are slow to grow. The lumberman's axe can destroy in an hour 

 the oak or the pine which has gained its stature and its worth only by 

 the annual increments of a century. The spark from the tobacco-pipe 

 of a careless tramp may kindle a flame which will speedily spread over 

 some great mountain-side and sweep away the forest covering which 

 has been growing ever since the beginning of our history as a nation. 

 Great revolutions may come in our national life, and generations of 

 men will pass away, before that forest covering can be replaced. 



The forthcoming census report will show that we have 25,708 

 establishments for converting the trees of our forests into lumber, 

 that $181,186,122 are employed as the needful capital for carrying on 

 this work, and that the value of the lumber produced is $233,367,729. 



The revelations of the census will show with new clearness that, 

 in view of the rapid destruction of our forests and the evils threatened 

 in consequence, there is no time to be lost in taking measures to avert 

 those evils so far as possible. What measures in particular should be 

 adopted it is aside from our present purpose to show. It is enough to 

 say in general that we should do all that we can individually, and by 

 legislative enactment where necessary, to prevent the further needless 

 destruction of our remaining forests. We should be more careful and 

 less wasteful in cutting them for the production of lumber. We should 

 guard them more vigilantly, and, by the enforcement of severe pen- 

 alties if need be, against those chance fires which result in evil, and 

 evil only, without any incidental good to any one. We should encour- 

 age the reproduction of forests, by leaving a sufficiency of seed or 

 mother trees on the ground where the forests are cut, and by carefully 

 excluding from all such grounds the cattle, whose teeth and hoofs to- 

 gether are almost as destructive as the axe or the flames. It is im- 

 possible to grow valuable forests where cattle are allowed to range in 

 them and browse upon the tender trees. In Europe, they have decided 

 long ago that the woods are no proper pasture-grounds for cattle. 



Finally, we should encourage the planting of many new forests on 

 what are practically the waste lands of many of our States. Such 

 lands can thus be made the most productive, pecuniarily, of all our 

 lands, while in those States and Territories which are comparatively 

 destitute of forests no land is too good to be devoted to this purpose, 

 and no labor of the husbandman promises so important and so profit- 

 able results as that of tree-planting on the large scale. The "North- 

 western Lumberman," Chicago, in its review of the lumber product 



