4.")0 JOURNAL OF FOKKSTRY 



Still other influences tending to destroy the forests, such as fire, 

 might be mentioned, but enough has been written about them by others. 

 The net result of cutting timber faster than it grows is not so much to 

 reduce the area of the forest as to reduce the average size of the trees, 

 each generation being cut at an earlier age than its predecessors. If 

 the rate of forest exploitation in New England that prevailed about the 

 middle of the last century had gone on increasing with the population, 

 nearly all the forests would have deteriorated by this time to mere thick- 

 ets, such as can be seen now in many thickly settled regions. Just how 

 much the average size of trees has diminished can only be conjectured, 

 for the early settlers were not particularly interested in measuring 

 their timber, and we only have a few records of exceptionally large 

 individual trees, such as might perhaps still be found in secluded places. 

 And the diminution in average size probably proceeded so slowly that 

 one person would not be much impressed by it, and each generation of 

 inhabitants simply became accustomed to trees a little smaller than 

 those their parents had known. 



One of the most potent factors in diminishing the rate of consump- 

 tion of wood in New England was the introduction of coal for fuel. 

 Coal, which is lacking in New England, New York, and New Jersey, 

 was discovered in Pennsylvania in the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury ; but it took some time to get people accustomed to it, and the 

 facilities for bringing it to New England must have been very limited 

 as late as 1846, when Emerson wrote of the large use of wood by the 

 railroads of Massachusetts. But wood long ago ceased to be used for 

 motive power by the railroads of the northeastern states ; and we have 

 become so dependent on coal for domestic purposes that just recently, 

 in October, 1917, the Secretary of Agriculture found it advisable to 

 issue a circular (No. 79), by A. F. Hawes (one of the authors of For- 

 estry in New England), urging a more general use of wood on account 

 of a temporary shortage of coal ! 



Within the memory of every adult person the use of substitutes for 

 wood in many other lines has increased rapidly. This was at first 

 mainly a matter of necessity, and the New England colonists probably 

 began to build houses of brick and stone more than two hundred years 

 ago, when the shortage of timber (due then mainly to inadequate trans- 

 portation facilities, as explained below), was first felt. Within the last 

 ten years, however, the substitution of other materials has been so 

 rapid that the producers of some of the commoner kinds of lumber 

 have spent large sums in newspaper and magazine advertising in 

 an effort to stem the tide. According to Report No. 117 of the U. S. 



