23 Mr Stevenson on the Building Materials 



understood to have originally extended, with little exception, 

 from the sea-coast to the confines of the extensive prairies of 

 the western states ; but the effects of cultivation can now 

 be traced as far as the foot of the Alleghany Mountains, the 

 greater part of the land between them and the ocean having 

 been cleared and brought into cultivation. It is much to be 

 regretted that the early settlers, in clearing this country, were 

 not directed by a systematic plan of operations, so as to have 

 left some relics of the natural produce of the soil, which would 

 have sheltered the fields and enlivened the face of the coun- 

 try, while at the same time they might, by cultivation, have 

 been made to serve the more important object of promoting 

 the growth of timber. Large tracts of country, however, 

 which were formerly thickly covered with the finest timber, 

 are now almost without a single shrub, every thing having 

 fallen before the woodman's axe ; and in this indiscriminate 

 massacre there can be no doubt that many millions of noble 

 trees have been left to rot, or, what is scarcely to be less re- 

 gretted, have been consumed as firewood. This work of ge- 

 neral destruction is still going forward in the western states, 

 in which cultivation is gradually extending ; and the formation 

 of some laws regulating the clearing of land, and enforcing 

 an obligation on every settler to save a quantity of timber, 

 which might perhaps be made to bear a certain proportion to 

 every acre of land which is cleared, is a subject which I 

 should conceive to be not unworthy of the attention of the 

 American Government, and one which is intimately connected 

 with the future prosperity of the country. But should popu- 

 lation and cultivation continue to increase in the same ratio, 

 and the clearing of land be conducted in the same indiscrimi- 

 nate manner as hitherto, another hundred years may see the 

 United States a treeless country. The same remarks apply, 

 in some measure, to our own provinces of Upper and Lower 

 Canada, in many parts of which the clearing of the land has 

 shorn the country of its foliage, and nothing now remains but 

 blackened and weather-beaten trunks. 



The progress of population and agriculture, however, has 

 not as yet been able entirely to change the natural appearance 

 of the country. Many large forests and much valuable timber 



