POSSESSIONS IN THE APPALACHIAN FORESTS 143 



The great land of China with its teeming population is so denuded of 

 forests that it is said that in many regions every stray weed and spray of 

 grass is carefully collected and husbanded for purposes of fuel, and that men 

 trundle hand barrows of coal for hundreds of miles to secure the fuel neces- 

 sary to preserve life. Unless we shall awaken duly to the need of preserving 

 our forests the time may come when this land shall be as China is today. 

 There was a day when China had her forests, and though it may appear to us 

 of a new country very long ago, a thousand years iu China amounts to less 

 than a century in the west. It is said that this danger of the disappearance 

 of her forests "became apparent to the rulers of China over 1,200 years ago, and 

 that they set themselves to do what as has already been stated the king of 

 England did after his restoration, to awaken the interest of the people in this 

 vital national subject. A work on forestry was prepared by their direction 

 which was so extensive that it is said to have contained over 50,000,000 of 

 words, that is twice as much, possibly, as the most voluminous encyclopedia. 

 It is said that three copies of this work were made and that the only one which 

 survived was destroyed by the soldiers of the relief column of the allied forces 

 which occupied the Chinese capital at the time of the Boxer rebellion. 



One cannot go over Europe without being made aware of the devastating 

 efifect of indifference to the preservation of forests. For example: one could 

 hardly ever forget the impression made in traveling over the desolate and 

 treeless waste in Spain that lies south of the Pyrenees. Through the improvi- 

 dence and folly of former governments this region that was once reckoned the 

 most fertile within the sweep of the Roman dominion has become, if not a 

 desert, something that looks very near akin thereto. The very song birds have 

 flown from a region where not a tree or shrub is left to protect them and fur- 

 nish the choir for their heavenly music. All through southern Europe the 

 proof meets the eye that man has been forced with infinite pains, with a re- 

 pentance as bitter as that of Esau, to make atonement for the carelessness 

 with which he sold his birthright, for throughout this country in regions which 

 must once have been covered with forests and which, owing to their denuding 

 had the soil washed away, we see how infinite must have been the labor that 

 was required to reterrace and reforest. We may all rejoice that the attention 

 of the American people has been formally directed to this great source of 

 national loss before it is too late. 



It must often have struck every observant man not only how negligent 

 the average American man is in the matter of preserving trees but how abso- 

 lutely inimical he is thereto as in other departments of life. I think this state 

 of mind is the result of natural causes and owing to that which at its best 

 we term conservatism continues after the causes have passed away. England 

 was once fully forested and then as its population increased the forests fell 

 before them and tillage took its place; then came the Norman conquest, and 

 in England, as in other countries, the conquerors and rulers, with a fine dis- 

 regard for everything except their own wills, established forests not for the 

 benefit of their people but for their own amusement, turning the cultivated 

 lands that had been conquered from the wilderness back into wilderness and 

 forest for their hunting ground. It was made a crime for the ordinary in- 

 habitant to hunt any wild animal. To some extent this law, curiously enough 

 in this age of democracy, still stands on the statute books. The forests there- 

 by became identified with the power and tyranny of the court, and the com- 

 mon people had no interest therein. Indeed such interest as they had was 

 only of hostility. Then when our forefathers cro.ssed the main and came to 

 this new country with its apparently inexhaustible forests, they found for a 

 time that the forest was the covert of their two deadly enemies, the Indian 

 savage, and his yet deadlier ally, malaria. So it was natural, possibly even 



