70 



BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



sliipped from Sagiuaw in Michig-an, to Havre in France, in one 

 year. It has been well said, that our white oak and yellow pine 

 forests are ravaged by everybody for indiscriminate purposes. 

 " From navy yards to cooper shops, from railroads to street alleys, 

 and from bridge building to shingle making, there is no quarter 

 given to the oak and no peace to the pine." The white pine and 

 other resinous trees, the ash, hickory, chestnut, and other timber 

 trees of the north, are beset wherever they exist, and are fast 

 melting away, with little or no thouglit for their renewal in kind, 

 or for young trees of any sort to take their places. 



Within the ten years from 1850 to 1860, more than fifty millions 

 of acres in our whole country was brought under cultivation. 

 All(>wing one-fifth to be prairie and destitute of wood, and we have 

 remaining an area equal twice that of Maine, or thirteen thousand 

 three hundred and thirty-three acres of woodland permanently 

 alienated from timber growing, for each of three hundred working 

 days for each year, during those ten years. 



Increasing population swells these evils. Between 1850 and 

 1860 our population increased 8,080,185, or 35.59 per cent. It is 

 now supposed to be advancing one million annually. While the 

 increase in manufactured lumber, for home consumption and 

 exportation, was $31,390,310 in 1860 over that of 1850, or 63.09 

 per cent. This shows that the demand for timber, notwithstanding 

 the vast increase in the use of iron, brick and stone, increases 

 each year with the advance of the nation in age and wealth. 



If for twenty years to come the demand for lumber shall advance 

 in the same ratio to the population as in the past twenty, more than 

 two hundred millions of dollars' worth of American sawed lumber- 

 will be needed each year ; and the same ratio in the increase 

 of population, which has called the fifty millions of acres into use 

 in ten years, will then be calling it in at the rate of more than one 

 hundred millions of acres each ten years. Our native-born and 

 foreign population will have farms, lots and houses, fences, 

 furniture, vehicles and agricultural implements ; but every year 

 they will be impoverishing the United States more and more of her 

 lumber, and all these things will demand a higher price. 



The State of New York, which has furnished more lumber than 

 any other State, as long ago as 1850 reached the maximum of its 

 ability to furnish it. That State from 1850 to 1860 increased her 

 population 183,341, while with the enhanced price of lumber, she 

 diminished her supply almost one million of dollars each year. 



