PLANTING TREES IN ANTICIPATION OP A DEMAND FOR THE WOOD. 



TLANTING TREES IN ANTICIPATION OF A DEMAND FOR THE WOOD. 



BY THE EDITOR. 



ITH a liberality, if not a recklessness, which, while it 

 was natural in a country originally well wooded, may 

 hereafter be considered culpable, we Americans have 

 omitted a simple and pleasing duty, that our immediate 

 successors will have great cause to complain of. We 

 have thrown away, for want of forecast, opportunities 

 which it may not now be too late to remedy, unless it 

 should be found impossible to convince those interested 

 how easily they may repair the error. We have de- 

 stroyed with the axe and fire, under an impression that 

 coal would supply our future wants, and already our 

 artizans are obliged to send to distant parts at a greatly increased cost for suitable 

 woods; it will be a sufficient illustration that might be greatly extended, if we 

 adduce the fact that Cabinet Makers already draw their supplies of Walnut wood 

 for the Atlantic cities from the shores of the Ohio and more distant points,* where 

 the same process of destruction is in progress ; that the Whip Makers and others 

 find it very difficult to procure a supply of small Hickory limbs ; and, more impor- 

 tant, that the sleepers of Railroad tracks, and good lumber generally have become a 

 most costly article. 



We are too apt to say that posterity has done nothing for us, and, therefore, we 

 vsill do nothing for posterity ; but we must recollect that it is to our successors we 

 are to look for the patrons of Railroads, and that it is for a future benefit and for 

 posterity we mainly invest our capital in these expensive undertakings. 



The first directors of Railroads were naturally too intent on making immediate 

 returns, and too much pressed with other duties, to take into consideration the great 

 resu.lts that might be produced in a few years by planting a few nuts, seeds, or trees, 

 on their boundaries, to admit into their calculations this immense source of profit. 

 If the Locust, White Oak, Chesnut, Hickory, and Larch, had been planted liberally 

 on the sides of the embankments, and canals had been similarly treated ; if the bor- 

 ders of our turnpikes and plank roads had now growing upon them trees producing 

 the most useful woods, planted at the time of the constraction of these vast lines of 

 intercommunication, we as a people should have been the richer by many millions of 

 dollars. Now nothing of value is produced upon the sites we have mentioned. 



State governments should long since have seen to this. No charter for a public 

 road or canal of any kind should ever have been granted in America without 

 the obligation that all the borders should be planted with suitable trees, and that 



*In our edition of Micltaux's North American Sj/lva; vol. 1, page 68, will be found the following note:— "'The demand 

 Walnut wood In the Atlantic cities, and the want of attention to its cultivation, have made It necessary for the 



malicrs. &c., to import from the Wc^t the greater portion of their supplies. This resource nmst fail In times, 

 wood may not improbably become nearly as costly as Mahogany, which it resembles in many of Its properties 



