ARBORICULTURE 



51 



Letter J^rom 'Barton CrtiiK^ hanK 



"President of Cog^sbuell "Polytechnic Institute. San Francisco, Cat. 



Legislation Demanded. 



{Special Correspondence of Arboriculture.) 



THE old nations of Europe, after 

 having made the same errors this 

 nation is now making, have awak- 

 ened to the fact that very strict legisla- 

 tion regulating the cutting and planting 

 of trees is absolutely necessary for the 

 preservation of proper climatic condi- 

 tions and a water supply adecjuate to their 

 needs. 



Why our legislators have done so little 

 can be accounted for probably only in 

 the following way : Our government is 

 one in which the representatives are not 

 as a rule, from families holding large 

 landed estates which have descended 

 from generation to generation, they are 

 many of them, perhaps most of them, 

 men who are in the profession of politics, 

 not for the honor so much as for the 

 making of a livelihood, and their con- 

 stituents in this new land are one and all 

 working for the "almighty dollar" with 

 no thougiht whatever for posterity. Such 

 legislation as there has been, has most of 

 it come too late — or so late as to make 

 the accomplishment of its aim a difficult 

 task where it should have been an easy 

 one. Take as an instance the Adirondack 

 Park of New York state. When the 

 first Forest Commission was appointed 

 the plan was all right, but it was not 

 carried out. The commission was prob- 

 ably composed of politicians and not for- 

 esters, and no plan was immediately 

 devised for scientific management of the 

 property, for, when done as it can be 

 done, but never is in our ordinary log- 

 ging camps in this country, matured 

 trees might be removed and thus allow 

 a replacement of a decrepid old stand of 

 timber by a vigorous new cro|) of better 

 kinds, without in any way afl:'ecting the 

 water holding conditions, and with a 



decided improvement to the forests as a 

 pleasure park. Such management, too, 

 would materially assure a greater se- 

 curity from fire devastations. 



But we have said that most forest 

 legislation comes too late. A belt of land 

 varying from five to fifteen miles in 

 width and running from a little north of 

 Utica almost to the St. Lawrence River 

 along- the western border of the Adiron- 

 dacks, another noticeable strip along the 

 north bank of the Black River after it 

 turns at Carthage, thousands of acres, 

 all of which was once covered with a lux- 

 uriant forest growth, is now not only 

 denuded of trees, but is almost totally 

 useless except as it furnishes wild black- 

 berries to the residents of the better 

 favored farm land bordering it. Had 

 proper laws prevented the wholesale 

 slaughter of the young trees which would 

 naturally have reforested this territory, 

 had fire been kept out, this territory, 

 now useless, might be an income pro- 

 ducer to the state. And almost if not 

 exactly similar cases are only too com- 

 mon in all the states of the Union. 

 France made the same mistake that we 

 are making — allowed its inhabitants to 

 strip its mountains of forest-cover, and 

 now, having seen its past folly, is having 

 to spend vast sums to rectify its care- 

 lessness. From i860 to 1879 the gov- 

 ernment spent $9,500,000 for reclaiming 

 waste lands, and this reclaiming process 

 has been continued since 1879 ^^ about 

 the same annual cost. 



And so it must soon be with us if 

 our present methods arc not changed. 

 We do not need laws giving authority 

 to buy up timber land for parks so much 

 as laws which shall prevent owners of 

 timbered property from clearing timber 

 from even their own land if it will not 



