DEMAND FOE LUMBER. 345 



Increased Demcmdfor Jjurriber. 



"With increasing population and the development of new in- 

 dustries, come new drains upon the forests from the many arta 

 for which wood is the material. The demands of the near and 

 the distant market for this product excite the cupidity of the 

 hardy forester, and a few years of that wild industry of which 

 Springer's " Forest Life and Forest Trees " so vividly depicts the 

 dangers and the triumphs, suffice to rob the most inaccessible 

 glens of their fairest ornaments. The value of timber increases 

 with its dimensions in almost geometrical proportion, and the 

 tallest, most vigorous, and most symmetrical trees fall the first 

 sacrifice. This is a fortunate circumstance for the remainder of 

 the wood ; for the impatient lumberman contents himself with 

 feUing a few of the best trees, and then hurries on to take his 

 tithe of still virgin groves. 



The vast extension of railroads, of manufactures and the me- 

 chanical arts, of mihtary armaments, and especially of the com- 

 mercial fleets and navies of Christendom, within the present cen- 

 tury, has incredibly augmented the demand for wood,* and but 



* Let us take the supply of timber for railroad-ties. According to Clave 

 (p. 248), France had, in 1863, 9,000 kUometres of railway in operation, 7,000 

 in construction, half of which is built with a double track. Adding turn-outs 

 and extra tracks at stations, the number of ties required for a single track is 

 stated at 1,200 to the kilometre, or, as Clave computes, for the entire network 

 of France, 58,000,000. This number is too large, for 16,000 + 8,000 for the 

 double track halfway = 24,000, and 24,000 X 1,200 = 28,800,000. In an article 

 in the Bevue des Deux Mondes, July, 1863, Gandy states that 2,000,000 trees 

 had been felled to furnish the ties for the French railroads, and as the ties 

 must be occasionally renewed, and new railways have been constructed since 

 1863, we may probably double this number. 



The United States had in operation on the first of January, 1872, 61,000 

 miles, or about 97,000 kilometres, of railroad. Allowing the same proportion 

 as in France, the American railroads required 116,400,000 ties. The Report of 

 the Agricultural Department of the United States for November and Decem- 

 ber, 1869, estimates the number of ties annually required for our railways at 

 30,000,000, and supposes that 150,000 acres of the best woodland must be felled 

 to supply this number. This is evidently an error, perhaps a misprint for 

 15,000. The same authority calculates the annual expenditure of the Ameri- 

 can railroads for lumber for buildings, repairs and cars, at $38,000,000, and 

 for locomotive fuel, at the rate of 19,000 cords of wood per day, at $50,000,000. 



The walnut trees cut in Italy and France to furnish gunstocks to the Ameri- 

 can army, during our late civil war, would alone have formed a considerable 

 15* 



