F0RE8TKY 28 



Q 



« 



Forestry 



While forestry is, perhaps, not strictly a branch 

 of agriculture, yet the influence of forests on agri- 

 cultural conditions is so great that a few words on 

 the subject will not be out of place. Until the last 

 very few years this vitally important question has 

 received no attention whatever at the South. The 

 great natural pine and hardwood forests have been 

 ruthlessly cut down for lumber, or to clear the land 

 for farming, with no thought for the future timber 

 supply, or for the bad effect of this wholesale de- 

 forestation on the climate ; and annual fires have 

 prevented the growth of new forests on what are 

 otherwise waste lands. In the tropical countries the 

 story is the same.' Countless acres of valuable hard- 

 woods have been cut down and burned to make 

 room for sugar and coffee plantations, and the re- 

 maining forests are being ransacked for cedar and 

 mahogany. The time has at last arrived when the 

 general public is beginning to realize the immense 

 importance of preserving forest conditions in all 

 rough, mountainous regions that are unfit for culti- 

 vation, and even some of the large lumber companies 

 who, in the past, have been among the most ruthless 

 of destroyers, are beginning to adopt means for har- 

 vesting their mature timber without ruining the 

 young trees and preventing the reforesting of the 

 land. The Europeans long ago learned to so manage 

 forests as to make them a perpetual source of income. 

 No lesson is more needed in all the American coun- 

 tries than this one. 



Deforestation has already reached the point 



