414 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
WHY WE SHOULD EXTEND OUR FOREST RESERVES. 
Col. John S. Cooper, of Chicago, one of our foremost champions of for- 
est protection and extension, in a paper presented before the last annual 
meeting of the Minnesota State Forestry Association, outlines the situation 
in the following very able manner: 
“What shall be the future of the human race, of our human race in 
America, with all its accumulating wealth, luxury, refinement and culture, is 
a question serious enough to tax all the philosophy and patriotism of the 
wisest and most thoughtful of our citizens. Are we to go the way of all 
the nations of the antique world? Are we, later on, to begin to show the 
same evidences of degeneration and decay, already so painfully evident 
amongst what are calied the Latin nations? Or shall we, like the people of 
England and northern Europe, prove ourselves for centuries to come su- 
perior to the enervating influences of wealth, luxury and a refined civiliza- 
tion? In my judgment, that almost wholly depends upon whether we shall, 
as a people, lose our love for nature and nature’s God. Did any one ever 
know a cynical voluptuary who had a deep love for forests and streams? 
No, and the reason is plain: the two things do not go together. Go 
amongst the people from our cities and towns in their annual outings, away 
out in the few wild regions (which may claim title to wilderness) we have 
left; see them about their campfires with their rods and guns, and try to 
find me a corruptionist, a railroad wrecker, a criminal, a bad man, at war 
with God, society and his own soul, and you will have discovered what I 
have not been able to in an experience of a quarter of a century amongst 
the camps of fishermen and sportsmen in the woods and waters of America. 
“Tt is not contended that we should maintain and enlarge our forests for 
that class of our population. We build penitentaries for them. But in be- 
half of that large class of our people who love nature, who count it as a 
step Heavenward when they can commune with her in the deep solitudes of 
her forests and on the bosom of her peaceful waters, we ask for the 
preservation of our remaining forests. Sentimental, says the highly practical 
person. Yes, but so is love; so is art; so is beauty; so is poetry; so is reli- 
gion; so is heaven; so is God; and thank God, so is the human soul. Burke 
in substance says, somewhere, that in order for one to love one’s country, 
one’s country should be lovely, and that implies physical beauty as well as 
moral and political. 
“The forests are nature’s beautiful garments. Stripped of them, she 
becomes to her lovers as unsightly as Noah did, on a certain occasion, to his - 
family. 
“So, if the practical person wants a solid, practical reason for conserv- 
ing our forests, he has it in the fact that it encourages patriotism. Suppose 
this whole country of ours were in the same situation as great regions in the 
central northern parts of your state, where all the merchantable and (what 
used to be considered) unmerchantable pine has been cut in accordance with 
that fine old practice of our lumbermen—‘Let the tail go with the hide;’ 
where forest fires have come along and burned up the entrails; where all 
there is left are the uncanny skulls and protruding ribs, in the shape of 
blackened stumps and deadened trees. Is any one optimist enough to be- 
lieve that any great amount of American brains, blood and treasure would 
be at hand for sacrifice upon the altar of patriotism for such a country as 
that? 
