24 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



for our present mileage of roads lias taken the available timber from an 

 area of land equal to that of the States of Ehode Island and Connecti- 

 cut, and estimating that the ties will need to be renewed once in seven 

 years, there will be required for this purpose, and to equip the new 

 roads built from year to year, the timber growing on 565,714 acres. 

 Allowing, again, that a growth of thirty years is necessary to produce 

 trees of proper dimensions for ties, it will require 16,971,420 acres of 

 woodland to be held as a kind of railroad reserve in order to supply 

 the annual needs of the existing roads, to say nothing of the demands 

 for new roads. This constitutes an area larger than the States of New 

 Hampshire, Yermout, and Massachusetts combined. It is more than 

 4 per cent, of the woodland of the United States, exclusive of Alaska. 



The volume contained, also, a report on the maple-sugar production 

 in the United States and Canada. From this it appears that, reducing 

 the maple sirup made to its equivalent of sugar, the total maple-sugar 

 product of the country for the census year was 50,944,445 pounds, or a 

 little more than one-twelfth of the whole sugar product of the country, 

 including that from sorghum and the sugar cane. Of the granulated 

 sugar made in the country that from the maple forms 17 per cent. 



Since the imblication of the volume referred to, two other circulars 

 have been distributed, and the division has been occupied in compar- 

 ing and tabulating the information thus obtained. The inquiries made 

 in these circulars were in general as to the methods adopted in tree 

 planting and culture, the increase or diminution of the forest area, the 

 observed influence of the presence or absence of forests upon streams, 

 floods, and droughts, and also upon climate. 



During the year about 3,000 packages of tree-seeds have been sent 

 to persons who have applied for them, or to those who it was thought 

 would subject them to various modes of culture and test their adapta- 

 tion to various soils and climates. 



Since the organization of the "American Forestry Congress" the De- 

 partment of Agriculture has recognized it as doing a kindred work with 

 that of its forestry division, and has given it whatever aid it could by 

 the presence of its officers, and contributions of information in its pos- 

 session. 



In view of the great and constantly increasing demands made upon 

 the forests for the supply of ties and other material for the use of rail- 

 road companies, it has become a question whether the companies might 

 not be made to see it to be a feasible thing, and for their interest, to plan t 

 trees along their roadways, or on tracts of their land adapted to the pur- 

 pose, and thus benefit themselves while at the same time relieving the 

 existing forests to the same extent from an onerous demand which is 

 now made upon them. The land-grant companies have an abundance 

 of land, either already covered with trees or which might be planted, 

 and thus foruish them a perpetual supply of timber, and these and 



