TRANSACTIONS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 01' NORTHERN ILL. 279 



or mechanical purposes, railroad companies, and every branch of civil 

 government. You urged tiie profits of timber culture, as far exceeding 

 any other farm industry. You demonstrated your estimates from historic 

 facts, gathered from the artificial forests of Europe — for as yet there were 

 no extensive plantations in this country; but from those already begun 

 you deduced conclusions. You demonstrated the rapid growth of forests, 

 from the example of the Duke of Athol, "who planted the timber from 

 which he had the pleasure of seeing a British frigate built at Woolwich 

 yard in 1819-20." You have also produced living witnesses, who have 

 seen the planting and the gathering time of these forests. You have 

 shown, to a considerable extent, the annual consumption of forest pro- 

 duct in the United States, and, with considerable exactness, the amount 

 of pine lumber now standing in our forests. That the aggregate amount 

 of uncut lumber is three hundred and twenty billions (320,000,000,000) 

 of feet ; that the annual consumption of pine alone is eight billions five 

 hundred millions (8,500,000,000) of feet ; that, allowing a small per cent, 

 of the increase of the demand and loss by fire and other casualties, in 

 less than eighteen years the entire pine lumber in the United States will 

 be exhaused. 



You have set side by side, on the same leaf, the blessings of a coun- 

 try abounding with forests and the calamities of a treeless waste; that 

 countries once abounding in forests, teeming with prosperous populations, 

 enjoying the luxuries of genial climates and productive soil, have become 

 desolated when they have been denuded of their timber by their improvi- 

 dent inhabitants; that drouths, hurricanes, famines and pestilences follow 

 a treeless country. You have hung out the signals of alarm to your own 

 countrymen. 



You have shown by demonstration that like causes which have deso- 

 lated and depopulated other regions are already going on in this country, 

 and that to a fearful extent ; that these tokens existed in nearly the entire 

 country east of the Alleghanies, from Maine to Virginia, and far to the 

 south. Here the dried springs and river-beds, the timberless hills and 

 valleys, the barren fields and abandoned homes, were fearful signs of woe. 



You have not ceased in all your councils to advocate the imperative 

 claims of this branch of American industry ; you have instructed your 

 representatives in Congress to secure the enactment of laws to enable and 

 require settlers on the public lands to plant timber; your voice has reached 

 every legislative hall and every department of human industry in the 

 land ; and, more than all, the ear of Him who holds in His hand the 

 nation's destiny. Here we rest our cause for a brief moment, and inquire 

 again: What has come of all this? or, in the language of our motto, 

 " Watchman, what of the night? " I am happy, while standing on this 

 eminence, and amid the rising glory of my country's greatness, to wave 

 back the answer: "The morning cometh ! " 



Already several of the State governments have enacted timber laws, 

 extending liberal patronage to all who will plant timber ; and already 

 Iowa alone has planted, within the last eight years, eighty millions of 

 forest trees, thirty millions more than Mahomet Ali planted in Egypt, 



