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THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[October, 



not stopped! Several of the States, notably 

 Colorado, Connecticut, Dakotah, Kansas, Maine, 

 Michigan and Iowa, passed local laws for the 

 protection of forestry, with more or less the same 

 regulations as the "Timber Culture Act," with 

 what success the following example will suffice 

 to show. The law in Iowa granted a partial 

 immunity from taxation for every acre planted 

 with forest trees. Not quite a year later an im- 

 partial American reporter writes : " Large sums 

 have already been paid the officers entrusted 

 with the official survey of such land, for which 

 the owners claim exemption from taxation, the 

 extent of which newly planted woodland is 

 given at 60,000 acres, representing a value of 

 over six million dollars. No one can seriously 

 assert these figures to be correct; still, as in all 

 similar cases, the claims of the ring will be satis- 

 fied. It is indeed a brand on our legislation that 

 with us almost the only effect of laws, designed 

 to promote the public interest, is the creation in 

 each case of an army of worthless and thor- 

 oughly incompetent officials." It has been the 

 same in all the States which had to order a sur- 

 vey of the newly planted (?) woodland ; hundreds 

 of thousands of dollars have been expended for 

 worthless officials, and already an abnegation of 

 the pertinent laws is thought of. 



Not for the purpose of offering statistics, but 

 simply to give a picture of the vast dimensions 

 these forest fires and devastations assume in free 

 America, we beg to be allowed a few examples 

 of their extent. The "Report of the Chief 

 Signal Officer War Department," for 1872, affirms 

 that in 1871 several thousand square miles of 

 forests were consumed by fire in the Rocky 

 Mountains and in the Northwestern States, a 

 great number of lives were lost, and the damages 

 amounted to hundreds of millions. The total 

 amount of wood destroyed by forest fires in 1871, 

 the same report states as exceeding ten years' 

 regular consumption of the whole United States I 

 Again, the "Report of the N. J. State Board of 

 Agriculture," for 1874, states that a great number 

 of the forest fires have been occasioned by in- 

 cendiary wood-cutters and colliers, to whom the 

 desired quantities would otherwise not have 

 been sold. Professor Sargent, of Harvard, lec- 

 turing in 1878 on the present and future con- 

 ditions of American forests, said: "Our 'inex- 

 haustible ' forests of the Sierra are rapidly disap- 

 pearing. From a single point in the Yosemite 

 Valley, last year, I counted no less than nineteen 

 extensive forest fires, caused more or less by 



carelessness of the herdsmen." In 1877, New 

 York, New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania and 

 Canada were heavy sufferers from forest fires, a 

 large part of the White Mountains being in 

 flames at one time. In New Jersey alone 30,000 

 acres of woodland were consumed by fire in 

 1879, which also destroyed all the aftergrowth on 

 the districts burnt in 1873, That these last fires 

 were incendiary was proved at the time. We 

 could fill volumes with similar figures from 

 official American reports. 



It has been proposed to pay large premiums 

 to those who extinguish forest fires before they 

 have assumed too large an extent ; but an 

 American authority says that by such a measure 

 the number of fires would only be increased, as 

 it would prove a profitable business to '' create " 

 small fires and extinguish them by well organ- 

 ized efforts, thus pocketing the premiums. It is 

 impossible to get a correct estimate of the wood 

 destroyed every year by forest fires, only that 

 much appears certain from a number of corres- 

 ponding reports that more wood is consumed by 

 fire than even by the wholesale thefts of jobbers 

 and rings. The Osceola News, Michigan, esti- 

 mates the amount of wood felled on the 

 Au Sable and Pine River in 1878-79 at 

 455,000,000 cubic feet, while in 1872-73 it did 

 not exceed 120,000,000. The Chicago Com- 

 mercial List writes about the same time : 

 "The northwestern woodcutters, supplied with 

 the newest and most destructive tools, are pre- 

 paring for the campaign against our forests ; the 

 crop of 1878-79 will surpass all previous ones, 

 400,000,000 cubic feet are contracted for at the 

 Muskegan river alone. Thus our magnificent 

 forests are destroyed!" The total value of tim- 

 ber manufactured in 1878 in the United States 

 amounted to $500,000,000; the amount stolen by 

 the " Timber Ring, if it could be accurately 

 ascertained, would increase this sum at least 

 one-third. In some States, where wood is used 

 almost exclusively as fuel, the consumption is 

 quite considerable. Massachusetts, for one, uses 

 $6,000,000 worth of wood annually (Emerson: 

 Trees of Mass.), without taking anj' rational 

 measures for planting and training an after- 

 growth. In Maine the cutting of timber has 

 gone even further; in many districts it has be- 

 come necessary to procure the necessary wood 

 from far off, and competent judges declare that 

 the " Pine State," once famous for her vast 

 forests, must, in fifteen or twenty years, be en- 

 tirely bare of such. Pennsylvania, too, has suf- 



