DEMAND FOR LUMBER. 857 
and but for improvements in metallurgy and the working 
of iron, which have facilitated the substitution of that metal 
of this material which American ingenuity has devised—we have an amount 
of consumption, for entirely new purposes, which is really appalling. 
Wooden field and garden fences are very generally used in America, and 
some have estimated the consumption of wood for this purpose as not less 
than that for architectural uses. 
Fully one-half our vast population is lodged in wooden houses, and barns 
and country out-houses of all descriptions are almost universally of the same 
material. 
The consumption of wood in the United States as fuel for domestic pur- 
poses, for charcoal, for brick and lime kilns, for breweries and distilleries, for 
steamboats, and many other uses, defies computation, and is vastly greatcr 
than is employed in Europe for the same ends. [For instance, in rural Swit- 
zerland, cold as is the winter climate, the whole supply of wood for domestic 
fires, dairies, breweries, distilleries, brick and lime kilns, fences, furniture, 
tools, and even house-building and small smitheries, exclusive of the small 
quantity derived from the trimmings of fruit-trees, grape-vines, and hedges, 
and from decayed fences and buildings, does not exceed two hundred and 
thirty cubic feet, or less than two cords a year, per household.—See Bericht iber 
die Untersuchung der Schweiz Hochgebirgswaidungen, pp. 85-89. In 1789, 
Arthur Young estimated the annual consumption of firewood by single fami- 
lies in France at from two anda half to ten Paris cords of 134 cubic feet.— 
Travels, vol. ii., chap. xv. 
The report of the Commissioners on the Forests of Wisconsin, 1867, allows 
three cords of wood to each person for household fires alone. Taking fami- 
lies at an average of five persons, we have eight times the amount consumed 
by an equal number of persons in Switzerland for this and all other purposes 
to which this material is ordinarily applicable. I donot think the consump- 
tion in the North-eastern States is at all less than the calculation for Wis- 
consin. 
Evergreen trees are often destroyed in immense numbers in the United Sates 
for the purpose of decoration of churches and on other festive occasions. 
The New York city papers reported that 113,000 young evergreen trees, be- 
sides 20,000 yards of small branches twisted into festoons, were sold in the 
markets of that city, for this use, at Christmas, in 1869. At the Cincinnati 
Industrial Exhibition of 1872, three miles of evergreen festoons were hung 
upon the beams and rafters of the ‘‘ Floral Hall.” 
Important statistics on the consumption and supply of wood in the United 
States will be found in a valuable paper by the Rey. Frederick Starr, Jr., in 
the Zransactions of the Agricultural Society for : 
Of course, there is a vast consumption of ligneous material for all these uses 
in Europe, but it is greatly less than at earlier periods. The waste of wood 
