50 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



of injustice has been done to legitimate present interests. It must 

 not be forgotten that it is quite as wrong to reserve everything for 

 our descendants, leaving ourselves in want, as it is to appropriate 

 everything for present needs. Nor may one rely too much upon 

 statistical presentations which show that after a certain number 

 of years (usually startlingly few) our supply of timber will be 

 exhausted. It is not so many years ago that our ancestors were 

 worrying themselves into premature graves, because of the rap- 

 idly diminishing supply of whale oil. We well may laugh at our 

 forefathers who paid high prices for the poor light that 

 whale oil gave, while we revel in the numerous cheap and satis- 

 factory methods of lighting which are given us by coal oil, gas, 

 and electricity. And we may expect our descendants to laugh 

 at us for many of the things which we worry about today. Who 

 knows what inventions are to come that will enable us to do away 

 with many of the economic uses of wood? Already the wooden 

 house is being replaced, even outside the fire limits of our cities, 

 by houses of brick, stone, or concrete ; and one wonders just 

 where, at the present rate of progress, the replacement of wood 

 by concrete is going to stop. Steel also is replacing wood in the 

 manufacture of railway cars, bridges, and in many other articles 

 of construction. Possibly the somewhat exuberant zeal displayed 

 by many of our lumbermen in forest destruction may be caused 

 by the fear that the rapid replacement of wood by other sub- 

 stances is likely to leave them stranded with a lot of useless 

 standing timber on their hands ! 



Whatever the merits of the discussion that is being carried on 

 at long range between the lumbermen of the Far West and our 

 city friends in the East, we well may congratulate ourselves that 

 we in Illinois are not on the firing line. We can continue on in 

 the even tenor of our way, and can indulge in a good deal of 

 effective conservation without exciting a storm of controversy. 

 This is not the only reason why Illinois is a peculiarly satisfactory 

 State for the working out of conservation principles. Our forests 

 are composed chiefly of the hardwoods, which as a class are much 

 less subject to destructive fires than are the coniferous trees. 

 Thus there is great likelihood that in Illinois long-continued ex- 

 periments with timber tracts would not be suddenly terminated, 

 as might be the case in a coniferous forest, no matter how care- 

 fully it might be guarded. Again, our Illinois forests are of 

 unusual scientific interest because they abut upon the prairies. 

 It is probable that, were artificial factors removed, the forest 



