•] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



369 



are so many kinds which grow here and nowhere 

 else. Our white pine and redwood, our hickories 

 and black walnut, our enduring locust of the East 

 and matchless sugar pine of the West were our 

 own exclusive property, the special gift of our 

 own goodly heritage. The same might be said of 

 the tulip tree and the Osage orange. Beside the 

 mere fact that we do possess such treasures, there 

 should also rise the question : What use shall we 

 make of them? Shall we recklessly exhaust or 

 shall we husband such resources and make them 

 the permanent handmaids to our civilization that 

 less valuable kinds have been to that of Europe ? 



We have but little idea what quantities of lum- 

 ber are used by comparatively small industries. 

 Thus a recent report informs us that yearly we 

 consume 100,000 cords of soft maple for shoe 

 pegs; for lucifer matches, 390,000 cubic feet of 

 pine go; while lasts, boot-trees and tool handles 

 call for 1,000,000 cords of birch; making our 

 bricks burns up 3,000,000 cords more. To string 

 tWe telegraph wires of the country upon, three hun- 

 dred thousand new poles are required annually. 



Under the general designation of naval stores 

 we have tar, turpentine, pitch and resin. These 

 are powers in the land whose value was recog- 

 nized along the Hudson as early as the first of the 

 last century by the British naval officers stationed 

 there. The value of these exports from our coun- 

 try in 1802-3 was $460,000. During the war of 

 1 81 2 this sank as low as )?3 1,000. Before our re- 

 cent war the value of this class of exports was 

 $1,203,537. During the war of 1864-5 '^ f^^^ *^° 

 $126,333. Immediately on the return of peace in 

 1865-66 it rose with a bound to $1,651,586. Of 

 course most of these exports were from the South- 

 ern States. Such statistics show many things, 

 and among their lessons is the one teaching us the 

 terrible prostration of national energy which fol- 

 lows in the wake of a war. In 1878-9 the value 

 of these naval stores exported was $2,260,586. 

 From 1802 up to 1852 the average value of forest 

 exports from this country has been about twice as 

 great as that from the ocean. 



To-day the hides from the pampas of South 

 America and the prairies of Texas are made into 

 leather by hemlock bark from the hillsides of 

 Pennsylvania. We can hardly dignify collection 

 of sumac leaves with the name of a forest indus- 

 try, yet if we compare our own (home) collected 

 leaves with the Sicilian, though the latter do con- 

 tain more tannic acid, the comparison is very 

 largely in our favor, because of the cheapness of 

 preparing our own leaves. 



In the United States we have about forty species 

 of oak. If we were to draw a line of distinction 

 between those of the Eastern slope and those of 

 the Western slope, we might say the former were 

 taller and straighter than those of the West. 



Taking the whole group of oaks, we might re- 

 gard them as nearly evenly divided into white and 

 black oak species. General characteristics of 

 these groups would be that the former (white) 

 matured their acorns in one year, and produced 

 good, compact wood ; while the latter (black) 

 usually required two years to mature their fruit, 

 and had wood which was darker colored and 

 much more porous. The chestnut tree is one 

 which has many claims upon us — its value as a 

 timber, its rapidity of growth, its tendency to 

 sprout when once cut down, the uses to which the 

 young sprouts can be put — all combine to mark 

 this as one of our most valuable trees. 



It may seem incredible, but Italy uses as food 

 6,400 tons of chestnuts a year. There almost as 

 much attention is paid to the production of choice 

 varieties of chestnuts as we pay here to the pro- 

 duction of improved peaches and pears. 



Among the trees introduced here is the so-called 

 English walnut. This tree is now largely culti- 

 vated in California for its fruit, but it should be 

 remembered that it has, in an exceptionably favor- 

 able location within what is now the city limits, 

 produced fruit for many years. Of course it could 

 not be counted upon here, but on the " Eastern 

 Shore" of Maryland it might be regarded as a cer- 

 tain crop. 



Passing by a great mass of important facts as this 

 abstract must, the lecturer stated that the follow- 

 ing States, so far as their lumbering product were 

 concerned ranked, as among all those of the Union 

 thus : 



Total value ot forest i>ro(hicts in 1880. 



Michigan. 1 $52,449,ii28 



Pennsylvania. 2 22.457.359 



Wistonsin. :i 17,952.347 



New York. 4 , 14.8.56.910 



Orejion. 26 2,0:^0,46;i 



Washington. .SI 1,T34.742 



Supposing this were put in another way, and 

 Oregon and Washington together as representing 

 that northwest whose forests are said to be inex- 

 haustible, and we will have as the value of the two 

 for 1880, $3,765,205, as against $22,457,359 for our 

 own State alone. In other words, we were de- 

 stroying our forests almost six times as fast as Ore- 

 gon and Washington combined. Judging the fu- 

 ture by the past, in much less than half a century, 

 under present processes, our State will be stripped 

 of her forest growth, and estimating the demand 



