FORESTRY. : 189 
FORESTRY AND ARBOR DAY. 
N. H. EGGLESTON. 
Some one has said, ‘The true basis of national wealth is not gold, 
but wood.” This declaration may be startling to some persons, but noth- 
ing is more true. There is nothing which so enters into the daily life of 
all classes and conditions of people as wood in some form. We are in- 
debted to it for shelter from storms, and from cold and heat. We are de- 
pendent upon it, in its natural condition, or in the form of coal—which 
is only the stored-ap wood of former ages—for the fires which warm our 
houses, cook our food, and impel the engines,which move the machinery 
of our almost innumerable factories, or transport us over the continents 
and oceans on our errands of business or pleasure. Our houses are filled 
with conveniences constructed of wood. Innumerable articles of orna- 
mental character are made of the same material. Indeed, turn where we 
may in our daily life, we meet the evidences of our dependence upon this 
material, wood. From the child’s rattle to the old man’s staff, from the 
cradle to the coffin, it is our almost constant companion and need. 
Gold has no such use or importance. Nations have lived and flourished 
without it, and they can do so again. This precious metal, as we are so 
accustomed to call it, is a convenience as a medium of exchange, but we 
have devised, in these latter days, other things which will serve this pur- 
pose as well. Gold is valuable also for ornamental purposes; but other 
things can take its place in this respect. It is not a necessity, as wood is. 
Without wood mankind could not live. Were the trees to be entirely ex- 
terminated, the human race would soon be exterminated. To be de- 
prived of them in any considerable measure would lessen greatly the 
comfort of living and send us back, as a nation, from our present condi- 
tion of civilization to a barbarous or semi-barbarous state. This condi- 
tion would come, not simply as the result of the lack of so much wood 
product ready for consumption in houses, factories and engines, but also 
of the lack of living trees in masses, the extended forests on the hillsides 
and mountains, which cause the snows of winter to melt gradually and 
the falling rains to ooze out slowly from the spongy leaf-soil, instead of 
rushing down the slopes to create sudden and disastrous floods to be fol- 
lowed by empty river beds and distressing drouths. It is the forests 
which by their shade and coolness temper climates, mitigating the in- 
fluences of heat and cold, and thus rendering the labors of the agriculturist 
more pleasant and profitable—thus promoting the welfare of all. since all 
are more or less dependent upon the rewards of husbandry. 
Spain is a standing testimony to the immeasurable value of the wood 
product of the earth, and the calamity which attends its loss in any con- 
siderable measure. Four hundréd years ago Spain was the foremost 
nation of Europe. Flourishing in arts and arms beyond any of its con- 
temporaries, she gave laws and dictated terms of peace or war to the 
nations around her, as France did under the first Napoleon. Writing of 
this country, Mr. Emil Rothe says: o‘‘Under the reign of the Moorish 
Caliphs the Iberian peninsula resembled a vast garden, yielding grain 
and fruit of every known variety in the most perfect quality and in enq- 
