123 



TIIK CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



THE UTILITY AND BEAUTY OF 

 TREES. 



Address 0/ *he Iton. George B. Loring, United Staies 

 Commissioner of Agricid'ure, delivered hefore the 

 American Forestry Congress, at their recertt meeting 

 in Cincinnati, Ohio. 



Gentlemen,— I have accepted your 

 invitation to be present on this occasion 

 and to preside over your deliberations, 

 not because I Feel competent to instruct 

 in the art of forestry, but in order that 

 I might assure you of the sympathy of 

 the Agricultural Department of the 

 Government, and of my own high esti- 

 mate of the value of your work. The 

 question of forestry is one of the most 

 intricate and difficult of all the agricul- 

 tural problems which come before us. 



That our forests are wasted by reck- 

 less extravagance and by uncontrollable 

 conflagrations ; that they are diminish- 

 ing before the immense demands upon 

 their products, we all know. Their 

 importance as a climatic influence is 

 conceded. The profit of tree-growing 

 on wisely selected lands is acknow- 

 ledged. But the methods by which 

 our forests can be restored and pre- 

 served still puzzle the statesman and 

 the cultivator alike. The nature of 

 property in timber lands as adjusted 

 for the State and the individual, in all 

 those countries where the forests have 

 attracted the special attention of the 

 Government, particularly in the Old 

 "World, has so much of exclusiveness 

 and reservation for the gratification of 

 personal desires, that we can derive 

 but little benefit from its study. The 

 rights and powers and duties of State 

 and Federal legislation, as regards our 

 forests, require the most careful and 

 ingenious consideration. We learn 

 from the statistical returns the vast 

 value of forest products to our com- 

 merce, to our domestic manufactures, 

 to our internal trade. And by con- 

 stant investigation we are ascertaining 

 the best systems of tree-planting, and 

 of cultivating specific wood crops in 



favorable localities. You will pardon 

 me, therefore, while I leave all these 

 difficult, practical problems for the con- 

 sideration of those who have brought 

 here the results of long study and ex- 

 perience, and turn my attention to the 

 value and 



IMPORTANCE OP TREE CULTURE 



as one of those arts by which man 

 beautifies his abode, and manifests that 

 taste which especially distinguishes 

 him in the scale of animate being, and 

 which he labors to gratify as soon as 

 he has laid the hard and substantial 

 foundations of State and Society. Men 

 build first, and then plant. The pri- 

 mary work of erecting an empire, in 

 which all the sturdy virtues are called 

 into operation, and where courage fixes 

 the national power, and wisdom es- 

 tablishes the national education, is not 

 a field for the exercise of man's love of 

 beauty. With the wars and the fell- 

 ing of the forests, and the log cabin 

 and primitive school-house of a newly- 

 settled country and a newly-founded 

 empire, taste has but little to do. But 

 when safety and property are made 

 secure, and the highways are well worn, 

 and the skill and strength of the culti- 

 vator have stripped the landscape of its 

 natural beauty, and the foot of man 

 has trampled out the graceful lines in 

 which Nature always works, then there 

 uprises man's demand for the beautiful, 

 and he endeavors to restore by art 

 what he was obliged to destroy for his 

 subsistence. For whatever may be his 

 outward circumstance, however harden- 

 ing and depressing may be the inci- 

 dents of his life, man has an instinctive 

 love of beauty, which insists on being 

 gratified. He knows that this is his 

 distinguishing characteristic which se- 

 parates him from the beasts that perish 

 — an element of his mind and heart 

 which leads him "from nature up to 

 nature's God." To him the sunrise 



