209 



practicability of their production and their great utility, as well as to encourage private 

 enterprise by setting the example. 



In a late number of the New York Evening Post, these two postulates were set 

 forth by the editor, a man who has correct views respecting the principles of forestry, and 

 who appreciates the national importance of this branch of agriculture. He lays it 

 down : — 



(1) " The East cannot flourish while the West suffers from the occasional drouths," 

 and, 



(2) " The prosjyeriti/ of the West will depend upon Forest growth." 



These two propositions are both true, and their serious consideration is worthy the 

 attention of the economist and the statesman. But how shall those forests be produced 

 in sufficient number and to a sufficient extent to be of general benefit? That is a problem 

 yet to be solved. The United States Government has encouraged planting by individual 

 effort in passing the "Timber Act," which gives a farm on the public domain to every 

 settler who will plant a portion of it with trees. This is well and will result in the 

 extension of woodlands. The great I'ailroad corporations begin to plant trees upon the 

 principalities of lands granted them as subsidies by the Government. It is but right that 

 they should do this work, and it will enhance the value of the lands they hold for sale, 

 while the woodlands are producing the supplies of cross-ties, the fuel, and the lumber, for 

 their own and for others' use ; and during all the time they stand, these artificial forests 

 will have exerted a most happy influence upon the climate. 



All this may be admitted by some who are more happily situated among the remnants 

 of the ancient woodlands. But are not we also already in danger 1 We of the naturally 

 timbered I'egions of the continent, especially those of us whose lands stretch oft' to the 

 northward and westward of the AUeghanies, forming broad fertile plains that are not 

 broken and mountainous, but level and altogether arable 1 These lands were heavily 

 timbered when in a state of nature, but in a brief space we have removed these encum- 

 brances, and have appropriated these fertile plains to agriculture. We are still rapidly 

 progressing with this change, and are aided in the work by the wonderfully increasing 

 demand upon the products that is created by the extention of the variovis manufactures 

 that require wood. 



Now, it may well be asked. Are we not in danger of carrying on this work to its 

 extreme limit, and shall we not suflTer thereby 1 That is a momentous question, and one 

 which demands our most serious attention. 



Meanwhile, we have something to offer as a substitute for the forest, to those of our 

 fellow citizens who do not feel prepared to plant timber trees extensively and as a crop, 

 more or less extensively, as it is done in thousands of instances by the land-owners of 

 Europe. We offer this plan to those who feel that they cannot spare a single field from 

 the plans and shedules they have laid down for a regular rotation of corn, oats, wheat, 

 and clover, or meadow lands — and also to those who may have on their farms no rocky 

 ledges, no ravines, no steep hill-sides, no odd waste corners, nor overflowed lands, upon 

 which they might advantageously plant trees. They are not asked to give up a single 

 field and turn it into woodland ; but even they who are so happily situated as to the 

 cultivable character of their lands may yet find it greatly to their advantage to plant trees 

 in the manner which is now to be explained. It will be all the more desirable that they 

 should do so, if their farms be surrounded on all sides by other lands equally well adapted 

 to arable crops, and equally free from the waste places so often found on many farms, and 

 which are almost utterly profitless, though always counted in as so many acres by the 

 assessors in making up the tax duplicate. 



In such a territory of fertile champaign country, where every farmer in a wide 

 neighbourhood is similarly inclined to crop his whole farm, and where each desires to reap 

 the golden harvest from every acre of which he may be possessed — ^just there is the great 

 danger of our finding out some of these days that we have too much cleared land in con- 

 tiguous tracts ; just there are we liable practically to turn our woodland into prairie — 

 and in many parts of the country we are rapidly reaching such a consummation. 



Just there, too, is the place at once to institute means that shall obviate the danger 

 which threatens. This is not to be done by relegating a single one of these beautiful 



14 (f. G.) 



