SOCIETY OF NOKTHERN ILLINOIS. 363 



pine, less than ten dollars per thousand was realized as gross re- 

 ceipts, that same timber to-day would sell in those same localities for 

 from thirty to fifty dollars j)er thousand. Jiut the mischief does not 

 end here. Those barren hillsides, after the slope has reached a cer- 

 tain pitch, must remain a desolation for centuries. 1 had evidence 

 of this in my last vacation in Western North Carolina, where T was 

 credibly informed that long before the slope reaches forty-five 

 degrees, five or six brief years of cultivation after cutting off the 

 timber, is all that is necessary to wash away every trace of cultivat- 

 able soil that a thousand years would scarcely replace again, liut 

 very few persons have any but the most limited ideas of the im- 

 mensity ot our lumber interests to-day. At the average rate of 

 railway construction and rei)air for the last twenty years, it takes 

 about 75,000 acres of timber at least thirty years old for the 

 ties alone each year, and the fencing is computed at fifteen million 

 dollars per annum. It requires about 300,000 trees annually 

 to keep our telegraph lines in repair. It even takes one hundred 

 thousand cords of wood each year to make our shoe pegs. There 

 are about 26,000 establishments for the manufacture of 

 lumber in the United States. These establishments employ about 

 150,000 hands and produce in board measure about twenty- 

 five thousand million feet per annum. The value of all tl ese 

 products is not far from one thousand million dollars yearly, 'i his 

 enormous drain upon our forestry resources, while it may be com- 

 puted, lies almost beyond the powers of comprehension; and this 

 drain is continual, excepting that while our supply is decreasing, the 

 demand is continually increasing. 



The Pacific slope of our national domain is being deforested 

 with a rapidity almost startling, while the foreign demand for our 

 lumber is greater than ever before; and this vast drain upon the 

 timber resources of our globe is not confined to the United States 

 alone. A Mriter in the Popular Science Monthly states that fifty 

 years ago there stood upon the island of Mauritius 800,000 acres of 

 dense primeval forest. A few years since there was less than 30,000 

 acres left. The island of Ceylon, but a few years since, was covered 

 with an almost unljroken forest; this has entirely disap])eared. In 

 the island of Jamaica, once densely wooded, pretty much the entire 

 timber used for building pur])oses has to be imported. In New 

 Brunswick the hemlock-spruce is passing to a rapid extermination^ 

 a single firm in one town using the bark from 1(10.000 trees each 

 year for tanning purposes alone. The denuding of all these forests 

 is accompanied by a rapid deterioration of the soil on which they 

 stood. Dr. Felix Oswald, in a recent article, says: "Asia Mino/, 

 once so densely populated, has become the epitome of a dying conti- 

 nent." Spain cut down her forests, and the value of her bottom 

 lands has decreased eighty per cent. He farther says: '' The coast line 

 of the Mediterranean seems wasting away as in a decline." All this 



