JVoocis and Woodlands, S03 



as are the grains of the lield ; forestry is as definite a branch of industry 

 as agriculture ; thei-e are schools to aid it, professors to teach and experi- 

 ment in it, and there is now an enormous literature relating to it, vastly 

 less, however, in English than in the Continental languages. The timbers 

 and woods of each country have been enriched by numerous exotic species. 

 In the place of scarcely a score of useful species originally in Great 

 Britain, there are now very many, and in France some seventy or eighty 

 are comparatively common. As one of the judges of forest products at 

 the late Centennial Exhibition, I had a better opportunity than ever 

 before to see what had been done in forestry abroad, and to see the results 

 of liberal education in these matters. In nearly every country of Europe 

 (except Great Britain) there is government aid; in some forestal engi- 

 neers are educated by the government, as army and navy officers are, 

 experiments are recorded, and, as I have l3efore said, there is an abundant 

 literature relating to nearly every department of the subject As a single 

 illustration of this, one of the Spanish Commissioners to the Centennial 

 Exhibition, Sr. Jose Jordana y IMorera, a forestal engineer of that 

 country, has prepared and published a list of the publications relating to 

 forestry published in the Spanish language alone, and they amount to 

 over 1,100 titles. 



Now just here let me say again that in each country of Europe not 

 only are the indigenous trees planted, but all available exotic species have 

 been tried, and new species are continually on trial. Wliai species are to he 

 idtimatehj successful (that is, profitable) in cult ivcit ion, can only he determined 

 hy actual experience. I wish to impress this upon your minds. No science 

 or " practical " skill can predict before trial what trees are to flourish 

 successfully, what merely live, and what utterly fail. This is one of the 

 secrets of nature, only to be brought to light by experiment and trial, and 

 by the experience of different places collated and compared. This work 

 has been going on so long in Europe that many truths are practically 

 settled, and some trees so thoroughly established that they are as profitable 

 as the original natives. For instance, what we call the " English Larch " 

 was originally not English, nor even British ; it was introduced into Great 

 Britain from the Continent, and is now so extensively grown that the 

 great majority of Englishmen probably have no suspicion that it is of 

 foreign origin. It is now considered the most profitable species introduced 

 into that country from elsewhere. About forty years ago, Loudon, after a 

 careful study of the matter, thought that 1,400 species of foreign trees 

 and shrubs had been introduced into Great Britain between 1548 and that 

 time, 1838 ; and since then the number has probably been nearly doubled. 

 How many of tliese are mere shrubs, and how many large enough to be 

 called trees, I \\k\q no means of judging ; but doubtless some hundi'eds 

 are truly trees. Of this large numl)er only a comparatively few have 

 proved profitable for cultivation on any considerable scale for useful pur- 

 poses, as distinguished from ornamental. Of many of these species the 

 experiment is still going on, and we do not yet know whether or not their 

 cultivation will prove profitable as timber trees or as fuel. 



