42 



Bushels of Acres of 



Counties. Apples. Forest. 



Ripley 650,735 69,183 



St. Joseph 780,243 43,958 



Steuben 655,843 47,973 



Sullivan 1,059,149 46,867 



Washington 888,421 80,852 



Wayne 607,377 47,265 



Several of these counties are among the most heavily wooded of any 

 in the State and, with the possible exception of Laporte, they all contain 

 a very large acreage of forest. The history of the apple crops in connec- 

 tion with the history of the removal of the timber in these counties helps 

 to substantiate our claim for their importance. In 1897 these counties 

 made the following showing: 



Bushels of Acres of 

 Counties. Apples. Forest. 



Allen 6,170 29,876 



Crawford 9,894 22,374 



Harrison 57.241 40,125 



Kosciusko 721 24,052 



Laporte 1,304 17,490 



Ripley 7,630 27,079 



St. Joseph 980 9,463 



Steuben 432 1,746 



Sullivan 13,123 9,718 



Washington 8,202 42,381 



Wayne 3,863 7,718 



From these figures it appears that the counties now exhibiting the 

 largest falling ofiC in their apple crops show nearly corresponding reduc- 

 tion in their forest areas (Allen, Sullivan, Steuben, Kosciusko, St. Joseph). 

 Similar conditions are not found all over the State, but it is certainly 

 suggestive that those counties that formerly produced the largest apple 

 crops and have suffered most from deforestation have fallen to the end of 

 the list in their yield of apples (Steuben, Sullivan, St. Joseph, Allen), and 

 the importance of the forest becomes the more significant when we dis- 

 cover that of the counties formerly producing the largest crops those 

 have fallen off the least that have removed the smallest amount of timber 

 (Crawford, Harrison, Laporte, Ripley, Washington). 



