394 STATE UORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



ARBORICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



THE WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION OF TREES. 



We most heartily endorse the sentiment of N. H. Eggleston, in Harper's 

 Monthly concerning the Avholesale destruction of trees and make the ibllowing 

 quotation from the article to open this section of the portfolio: 



The trees are man's best friends, but man has treated them as his worst 

 enemies. Tlie history of our race may be said to be the history of warfare upon 

 the tree world. But while man has seemed to be the victor, his victories have 

 brought upon him inevitable disasters. 



In the more civilized periods and places the poetic sentiment has found sweet 

 comj)anionship in the trees, and peopled the groves with dryads and hama- 

 dryads, while taste and refinement have planted them near the household 

 dwelling-place, and found pleasure in their beauty and shade. The general 

 feeling and course of action, however, have been in an opposite direction. The 

 trees have not only been regarded by man as his lawful plunder, but he has 

 even seemed to have a positive pleasure in their destruction. He has attached 

 no value to them, except for the satisfaction of his physical wants, to furnish 

 him fuel and shelter and the material of the industrial arts, and in satisfying 

 these wants as they have arisen hi; has been reckless of the future. The sup- 

 ply has seemed to be abundant, and the future has been left to take care of 

 itself. 



In our own country we have gone to the forests in a kind of freebooter style, 

 cutting, and burning more than we could cut, acting for the most part as 

 though all the while in a frolic or fight, until now at length, after a century or 

 two of this kind of work, we are waking up to the facts that our once bound- 

 less woods are disappearing, and that we are likely to suffer no little loss there- 

 by. But it is only tlie few who seem to have any adequate sense of our condi- 

 tion as affected by the threatened loss of the trees. 



A POCKET ARGUMENT. 



Mr. C. M. Hovey in the Massachusetts Ploughman, suggests a method by 

 which some practical work in forestry can be done by the State, he asks: 



Why not rely in this important matter upon individual effort? Why not 

 appeal to every owner of Avaste lands througliout the State to plant them with 

 forest trees, under tiie inducement of exemption from taxation, or at least with- 

 out additional tax for every acre planted, whether one or five hundred ? Every 

 farmer or owner would soon become deeply interested, and have some induce- 

 ment to seek for information which would enable him to learn its importance 

 and aid him to succeed in his effort, provided he was not already familiar with 

 the work. It would entirely change the state of things as they now exist, and 

 which quite discourage all improvements of the kind. Farmers who would 

 naturally plant trees, are deterred from doing so, knowing that their taxes will 



