CUMBERLAND—BELL AND HARLAN COUNTIES. 7 
The walnut timber is as ruthlessly destroyed in Eastern 
as in Western Kentucky. I saw a magnificent walnut tree, 
forty inches in diameter, with a trunk of more than fifty feet 
in length, cut for rails—a tree worth hundreds of dollars sac- 
rificed for a few panels of fence. No care whatever is taken 
either to preserve the old forest walnut now standing or to 
encourage the young growth. Besides this, except in cer- 
tain localities, there is a practice of yearly ‘‘burning off the 
woods,” which is doing almost irreparable injury to the forests 
in those parts of Black and Brush mountains where the tim- 
bers are finest. Especially in the Black Mountains, there is a 
very heavy growth of weeds that yearly die down, and, with 
the fallen leaves, make a perfect mass of highly combustible 
material. Late in the fall, when these are driest, they are set 
on fire, and the heat is great enough to kill every bush that 
has appeared during the year. As this is done year after 
year, there is no chance whatever for a young forest growth 
to start. The consequence is, that in those parts of Black 
Mountains where the present forests are most dense and 
valuable, there is not a single young tree or bush to be 
found. In many places this practice has been going on so 
long that the old forest is rapidly dying out with age, and 
there is nothing coming on to take its place. If the practice 
-of burning off the mountains is not stopped immediately, at 
any rate long enough for a new forest to get a permanent 
hold, so that fire cannot destroy it, before many years a 
mountain as rich in valuable timbers as any I know of in this 
country will be almost, if not entirely, stripped of its precious 
products. Some extra care should certainly be taken to pre- 
serve and perpetuate so rich a forest of such timbers as black 
walnut, black, white, and blue ash, white hickory, tulip tree, 
black birch, etc. So valuable are the ashes and the white 
hickory now becoming, that a Paris carriage manufacturing 
firm is thinking seriously of establishing a spoke factory in 
some part of Kentucky, where these timbers can be most 
easily obtained. Already there is a very large trade going 
‘on in Lzvtodendron or tulip tree (called yellow poplar) timber, 
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