362 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



out a certain inspiration, a resort, a sylvan retreat, which in its 

 pristine beauty, was wont to lift us, sensibly i ito higher thought 

 and nobler spirit. We are nearer to and almost in touch with, the 

 infinite, so certainly as we are in the forest, — the wilderness; and 

 never quite so free from our OAvn evil fancies, rancors and enmities, 

 as we are in the native woodland or in the mountains with their 

 varied growths of Oak, Pine, Chestnut, Fir, Ash and the many other 

 beautiful trees. We are never so free from care and the anxieties 

 that beset us in business life or in the marts of trade, as when we 

 leave our* busy affairs and go among the trees. 



It seems to me that no one, either in respect to his material benefit 

 and actual happiness, should be more interested in, or more devoted 

 to, forestry than the farmer, and the prevalent destruction of forests, 

 regardless of economy in a material or financial sense, or in its 

 moral bearings, is hardly short of vandalism and does not have that 

 regard for those that come after us, which every consideration of 

 kindness and foresight for them should certainly prompt or inspire. 

 It is a clear proposition to my mind, and a truth, that nature, if pro- 

 tected, supported, encouraged and aided, will supply every genera- 

 tion with adequate timber, from the lands already denuded, and it 

 is the insistent duty of all citizens to observe that dictum and give 

 nature and the native trees a chance. The State's purchase of lands 

 for a nominal price, is a step in the right direction and these areas, 

 in thirty-five or forty years, will afford vast quantities of saw and 

 structural timber for all uses. True, one single year of growth, on 

 a given tract, would hardly show, to the casual observer, any percep- 

 tible gain or value; but, in three or four decades, with the trees 

 safe from fire and carefully guarded from other sources of destruc- 

 tion, the results would astonish any one who would figure the actual 

 aggregate value, that would thereby be produced, in trees of varying 

 growths and kinds. Do your part and nature will do the rest; and 

 I am sure that the study of forestry, with its direct advantages to 

 all, will appeal to your good sense and become, increasingly and 

 absorbingly, a subject of actual interest and of energetic effort on 

 your part and in the right direction. 



While the soil of the surface and the growth thereon, whether of 

 tree, fruit or grain, is of great import, and, apparently, of the most 

 value to the farmer, I apprehend, that the deposits, unknown and 

 undiscovered, that lie beneath the surface, are, in many counties, 

 of quite as much, and, in many instances, of decidedly niore, actual 

 interest, and economic and commercial value to the tillers of the 

 soil. The minerajs on his farm or unseated lands, whether coal, 

 clay, iron ore, limestone or cement, are just as absolutely and en- 

 tirely his property as the soil on the surface, the timber thereon, 

 or the grain in his barn; and this argues, pertinently, to ,me, the 

 importance and the direct advantage to the farmer of acquiring 

 some knowledge of Practical or Economic Geology; especially, the 

 aspects and the strata, thereof, that are exposed', in part, or may 

 be found upon his own property and the formations in his own im- 

 mediate district or county. It is true,— and I know whereof I af 

 firm,— that ten thousand farmers,- and, indeed, a multiple of that 

 number,— have been dispoiled of their valuable mineral deposits, de- 

 frauded of their coal, clay, iron ore, limestone, and what not, owing 

 to the fact that they were deficient in knowledge of the geological 



