STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 197 



assume that every one of you know how important a factor that is in 

 tbe forestry problem; but if anyone of you do not, I am certain you 

 have those among you who can discuss that phase of the subject more 

 intelligently than I can. I will not stop here even to discuss the govern- 

 mental absurdity of giving timber destroyers an immense bounty for de- 

 molishing the great forests which temper the north winds to our suffei- 

 ing fields and fruits, while at the same time it gives liberally for plant- 

 ing trees to modify the winds from the west! 



My purpose is to give some well authenticated statistics of the pres- 

 ent condition of our forests, the rate at which they are being destroyed, 

 their probable duration if the present rate of destruction is main- 

 tained, and to suggest means of supplementing them with other re- 

 sources It does, indeed, seem incredible that this country, yet in its 

 infancy — as the lives of nations are estimated — and which was en- 

 dowed with a wealth of timber regarded as absolutely inexhaustible, 

 should enter the front door of the second century of its life to be 

 there confronted with the most melancholy of all problems, that; of 

 an insufficient timber supply — a timber area so narrowed that proces- 

 sions of climatic calamities are almost constantly on the march by 

 reason of the narrowness. But however incredible this may seem it 

 is not the less true; shut our eyes to the fact as we may, or sing never 

 so sweetly our bounty-paid lumber lords to the contrary, the present 

 condition of our forests is deplorable. The insufficiency of our tim- 

 ber supply is already appalling, and daily growing more so, because — 

 paradoxical as it may seem — parsimony and extravagance are running 

 a joint race of devastation and waste! 



The figures which I am about to present for your consideration are 

 authentic and reliable, and I would have no one consider them as the 

 emanations of an alarmist's brain, or unworthy of attention. It is 

 said that our Western and Northwestern mills have in forty years de- 

 stroyed the timber that it took two hundred years to grow. The 

 capacity of the present mills in the South is sufficient to exhaust the 

 valuable timber in that region in twenty-five years, audit would take 

 from one hundred and fifty to two hundred years of intelligent timber 

 culture to renew the probable destruction of the next twenty-five 

 years. There are yet enormous belts of timber on the Pacific coast, 

 yet careful calculations have demonstrated that when that supply is 

 drawn upon for the nation's needs — as it soon must be if something 

 is not done to check the present frightful consumption and reckless 

 waste — it cannot possibly last over fifty*years. 

 It requires a serious contemplation of the almost inconceivable con- 



