356 DEMAND FOR LUMBER. 
The vast extension of railroads, of manufactures and the 
mechanical arts, of military armaments, and especially of the 
commercial fleets and navies of Christendom, within the pres- 
ent century, has incredibly augmented the demand for wood,* 
* Let us take the supply of timber for railroad-ties. According to Clavé 
(p. 248), France had, in 1862, 9,000 kilométres of railway in operation, 7,000 
in construction, half of which is built with a double track, Adding turn-outs 
and extra tracks at stations, the number of ties required for a single track is 
stated at 1,200 to the kilométre, or, as Clavé computes, for the entire network 
of France, 58,000,000. This number is too large, for 16,000+8,000 for the 
double track halfway = 24,000, and 24,000 x 1,200 = 28,800,000. In an article 
in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July, 1863, Gandy states that 2,000,000 trees 
had been felled to furnish the ties for the French railroads, and as the ties 
must be occasionally renewed, and new railways have been constructed since 
1863, we may probably double this number. 
The United States had in operation on the first of January, 1872, 61,000 
miles, or about 97,000 kilométres, of railroad, Allowing the same proportion as in 
France, the American railroads required 116,400,000 ties. The Report of the 
Agricultural Department of the United States for November and December, 
1869, estimates the number of ties annually required for our railways at 30,- 
000,000, and supposes that 150,000 acres of the best woodland must be felled 
to supply this number. This is evidently an error, perhaps a misprint for 
15,000. The same authority calculates the annual expenditure of the Ameri- 
can railroads for lumber for buildings, repairs, and cars, at $38,000,000, and 
for locomotive fuel, at the rate of 19,000 cords of wood per day, at $50,- 
000,000. ; 
The walnut trees cut in Italy and France to furnish gunstocks to the Ameri- 
can army, during our late civil war, would alone have formed a considerable 
forest. A single establishment in Northern Italy used twenty-eight thousand 
large walnut trees for that purpose in the years 1862 and 1863. 
The consumption of wood for lucifer matches is enormous, and I have heard 
of several instances where tracts of pine forest, hundreds and even thousands 
of acres in extent, have been purchased and felled, solely to supply timber 
for this purpose. The United States government tax, at one cent per hun- 
dred, produces $2,000,000 per year, which shows a manufacture of 20,000,- 
000,000 matches. Allowing nothing for waste, there are about fifty matches 
to the cubic inch of wood, or 86,400 to the cubic foot, making in all upwards 
of 230,000 cubic feet, and, as only straight-grained wood, free from knots, can 
be used for this purpose, the sacrifice of not less than three or four thousand 
well-crown pines is required for this purpose. 
If we add to all this the supply of wood for telegraph-posts, wooden pave- 
ments, wooden wall tapestry-paper, shoe-pegs, and even wooden nails, which 
have lately come into use—not to speak of numerous other recent applications 
