JOURNEY THROUGH JERSEY 37 



tracts of appurtenant woods, which are cut off, how- 

 ever, without any system or order. The bulk of the 

 inhabitants sell wood only in so far as to bring the 

 land they own into cultivation, reserving a certain acre- 

 age of forest necessary for domestic consumption. The 

 Union, a high furnace in Jersey, exhausted a forest of 

 nearly 20,000 acres in about twelve to fifteen years, and 

 the works had to be abandoned for lack of wood. This 

 cut-over land was to be sure divided into farms and 

 sold, but was of trifling value merely because the wood 

 was gone. If it does not fortunately happen that rich 

 coal mines are discovered, enabling such works to be 

 carried on, as in England, with coal, it will go ill with 

 many of them later on. In and around this mountain 

 country, the forest trees are generally lea'f-bearing, oak 

 for the most part, and, what is to the purpose, this tree 

 does not seem of a very rapid growth in America. 



Because at the beginning in the nearer, and latterly 

 in the farther regions of America, wood has been every- 

 where in the way of the new planter, people have 

 grown accustomed to regard forests anywhere as the 

 most troublesome of growths ; for if crops were to be 

 seeded it was a necessity to cut down the trees and 

 grub the roots, a great labor, and if the forests could 

 only be blown away, then certainly few trees would be 

 there to give more trouble. A young American going 

 to Europe happened to land on the west coast of Ire- 

 land, where in certain parts not a bush is to be seen for 

 many miles. He exclaimed in astonishment, ' What a 

 wonderful country ! What a lucky people, with no 

 woods to plague them/ ' We are plagued,' they an- 

 swered him, ' precisely because we have none, and we 

 are planting as fast as we can.' 



