260 Nebraska State Horticultural Society. 



SOME FOREST PROBLEMS. 

 By Frank G. Miller, University of Nebraska. 



For a third of a century now, a campaign has been carried oi» 

 in this country for a more rational treatment of our forests. As a 

 result, a general interest in this matter has been awakened, and the- 

 importance of our native woods as a source of national wealth, and 

 the practical necessity for their preservationn seems at length to- 

 have come home to our people. The old conception was that forests 

 were an encumbrance to the land, and were, therefore, to be gotten- 

 rid of in the easiest possible manner. Now with Baron Von Miller, 

 the great German, we are coming to "regard the forest as a heritage- 

 given us by nature, not for spoil, or to devastate, but to be wisely 

 used and carefully maintained." 



The attitude of the American people toward the forests hitherto^ 

 finds a ready explanation in the conditions that obtained on the con- 

 tinet when it was first settled. Then the entire eastern portion was an; 

 almost unbroken forest, extending to the western slope of the Alle-^ 

 ghanies in the north, and swinging in the south as far west as the- 

 Indian Territory. This area included seven-tenths of our naturali 

 woodlands. The Pacafic coast forests, about which so much has beea 

 written comprised but one-tenth; one tenth was to be found in the- 

 Rocky mountain country, while the remaining one-tenth occured lit 

 scattered areas throughout the prairie states. 



So vast was the timber area, particularly in the east, that to^ 

 the early settlers the continent appeared an unbroken wilderness^ 

 and "a wilderness and civilization," they said, "are incompatible."" 

 The new comer must have lands for agriculture, fields must be cleared,, 

 and so this hardy pioneer armed himself with his axe and firebrand, 

 and the battle against the forest began. From that time on, the 

 seal of Indiana, bearing the figure of a wood chopper with uplifted axe, 

 has been emblematical of the attitude of the whole country toward the 

 forests. The war for their extermination has been a long and des- 

 perate fight, it being more than two centuries before they had re- 

 treated more than a few miles from the Atlantic shore. 



So far as .clearings have been made on lands that are better 

 adapted for agriculture than for timber the fight to subdue the forest 



