1880.1 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



277 



Forestry. 



CUMMUNICA TIONS. 



FORESTRY IN NORTH AMERICA. 



The Pertinent Laws and Regulations, and the Future of North 

 American Forests. 



BY JOHN BOOTH KLEIN FLOTTBECK, GERMANY. 



Translated for the Gardener's Monthly by G. W. De B. 



From time to time, we hear through the pub- 

 lic press of" enormous " forests, of '' enormous " 

 forest fires, and of " enormous " damages done 

 to forests in North America ; occasionally we 

 are even favored with rather exhaustive particu 

 lars. However loud the complaints may have 

 been, and ever so condemnatory, very soon 

 the idea that these forests are " inexhaust- 

 ible" will again come to the foreground, sup- 

 ported by a mass of desultory and unreliable 

 reports, false statistics, so-called popular essays, 

 and other interesting articles. The following 

 attempt to give a picture of the actual situation 

 and the probable future of the American Conti- 

 nent, which, in a great measure, depends on the 

 preservation and rational development of its 

 forest land, will therefore hardly be out of place. 

 The incompleteness of our work will be the 

 more readily excused, as many of the incidental 

 questions remain unsolved even by the compe- 

 tent authorities in America, whose judgment 

 must necessarily be incomplete as long as the 

 larger part of this extensive forest land has 

 never even been surveyed. Nevertheless, we 

 shall be able to give a reliable, if not an exhaus- 

 tive description of the general condition ; as 

 some of the first authorities on forestry in the 

 United States and Canada have furnished us 

 much valuable material by special correspond- 

 ence as well as through their own publications. 



With few exceptions, American forest trees 

 stand the European climate well ; many of them 

 prove valuable material for various trades and 

 industries, more profitable even than the indige- 

 nous species ; and the future of American for- 

 estry is of particular interest to us, as a great 

 many of the better woods at present manufac- 

 tured in Europe came from North America. 

 Our own imports, as well as our exports to other 

 countries, would be materially affected by a 

 notable decrease of American exports ! 



When in the seventeenth century Europeans, 

 principally Englishmen, began emigrating to 

 North America, the extent and magnificence of its 

 forests, which until then the foot of man had but 

 seldom penetrated, very naturally originated the 

 idea of then- being inexhaustible, and the most 

 inestimable waste no doubt began almost with 

 the first settlers. In 1681, William Penn issued 

 an ordinance decreeing that for every five acres 

 cut down, one acre of woodland must remain 

 untouched, and that principally oaks and mul- 

 berry trees, so indispensable to ship-building and 

 silk-culture, must be spared. Again, in 1693, 

 a commission of three was appointed to investi- 

 gate the damage suffered by the citizens of 

 Breucklyn (now Brooklyn) by the unauthorized 

 felling of some of the very best and largest trees 

 in their forests. Both laws seem, however, to 

 have remained dead letters, and it is not likely 

 that the unruly times of the eighteenth century 

 left the American Colonies much time for the 

 consideration of questions like those relating to 

 forestry. 



Soon after the Colonies had achieved their in- 

 dependence, we find a law passed by Congress, 

 reserving certain woodland, grown with ship- 

 timber for the United States navy. The general 

 situation was, however, hardly effected by this 

 law, for as late as 1817 the timber land thus re- 

 served was but twenty square miles. A number 

 of laws from 1820 to 1840 regulated the sale of 

 government land, in which no distinction was 

 made between most valuable woodland and arid 

 plains, because in most cases the government 

 was not even informed to which of the two 

 classes the land sold belonged. The price, ac- 

 cording to the "Report upon Forestry," was fixed 

 at an average of $1.25 per acre, and the pur- 

 chaser bound himself to cultivate a certain por- 

 tion of the land, in consideration whereof, he 

 was given a thirty-three months' credit for the 

 purchase money. The large speculators, how- 

 ever, only cared for the timber, cut down what- 

 ever they could, and mostly disappeared long 

 before the end of these thirty-three months, in 

 many cases without as much as paying the mis- 

 erable $1.25 per acre. To cover their wanton 

 depredations these speculators very often in- 

 augurated a forest fire before they left, which 

 caused even larger damages than the thefts it 



