PAPERS OX BIOLOGY AND AGRICULTURE 109 



United States except the far Northwest are wearing more 

 and more the emaciated look of a hunger victim. 



The Northeastern States, once rich in forests, are now 

 hard put to it to run their huge paper pulp-mills, shipping 

 in two-thirds of their supplies from Canada, and they are 

 feeling much as did the Irishman who cut off the limb be- 

 tween himself and the tree. Already Canada has put an 

 embargo on crown-forest shipments, and the paper-print 

 factories are panicky lest export from private forests be 

 also forbidden. Is it not humiliating to be an industrial 

 suppliant at the feet of a British province for such a 

 prime necessity as print-paper? Xow some few attempts 

 are being made in the East to remedy this matter by in- 

 telligent tree-farming, but it is too late to overtake the 

 lost opportunity. What can we do if the Canadian supply 

 fails us ■ Canada is not the one to worry about that. 

 England with her serious housing scarcity, and her de- 

 termined attempt at reforestation, is almost sure to call 

 upon her loyal province over here to help her out, and an 

 embargo of Canadian lumber-products is not at all im- 

 probable. 



The great Xorthwest Territory from the Ohio to the 

 Lakes was plentifully supplied with timber, almost an 

 unbroken forest of noble hardwoods, when its doors were 

 opened to the settlers who poured in like a horde of in- 

 vaders to appropriate her natural resources. Eestless, 

 ambitious, energetic, resistless, they first laid the axe to 

 the forests. Billions of feet of the finest lumber were fed 

 to the Moloch of unregulated exploitation. Have yon 

 never heard men yet living tell how they cleared these 

 forests for the domesticated plants of agriculture? The 

 neighbors would gather upon invitation for a log-burn- 

 ing. The trees had been felled and partially trimmed; 

 they dragged them into great piles as high as a house, 

 and attaching cables, their horses in tandem drew them 

 up inclined planes until they looked like grouped cottages 

 and farm-buildings. Then the fire was applied, and re- 

 specting no aristocracy of species, quality or size, it con- 

 sumed with lurid greediness black-walnuts, sugar, oak, 

 poplar, elm and ash, often as much as six feet in diameter, 



