19 



wish to rear the Norway spruce, or silver fir, or larch, or 

 Weymouth fir, or the Douglas pine, or any of the pitch 

 pines of North America; because we can call forth, if we like, 

 whole forests of them on sub-alpine heights never yet thus 

 utilised. 



Suppose we reckon that one hundred forest trees would be 

 required to be planted on an acre, allowing for periodic 

 thinning out; and assuming that for climatic and hygienic 

 considerations, as well as for the maintenance of wood supply, 

 we should require finally one-fourth of our Victorian territory 

 kept as a forest-area, we would expect to possess 1,568,000,000 

 trees, and to provide for their timely restoration in proportion 

 to their removal or natural loss. 



Most of us are lulled into security by seeing that we receive 

 as yet our foreign woods in the course of ordinary traffic, and 

 we are not easily inclined to think, that the supply may cease 

 suddenly, or be obtainable only at an exorbitant expense. 

 Even in the United States of America there are places where 

 the price of fuel and timber has already risen fourfold. We 

 are told that recently, in the States of Wisconsin and Michigan 

 alone, during one single year, 2,000,000 of pine-trees were 

 cut for lumber; and it is estimated that at the present rate of 

 destruction no timber trees will be left in those states after 

 fifty years, while it will take a century to replace them, if even 

 this be possible. Quebec exported in 1860 not less than 

 70,000,000 cubic feet of squared or sawn timber, equal to 

 about a million tons of wood a large share yielded by the 

 Weymouth pine (Pinus strobus) not taking into account 

 the current local consumption. This tree, yielding the white 

 American pinewood, requires fully sixty years of growth before 

 it can be sawn into timber of any good size. During the first 

 two years of the recent civil war in North America, 28,000 

 walnut trees were felled to supply one single European factory 

 with the material for gun-stocks, demanded for this fratricidc-il 

 war. Is it not right to reflect timely on the vast extensions 

 of railroads, manufactures, mines, ship-building, dwellings, 

 and so forth, and then to ask, where is the wood-supply to 

 come from'? The requirements in this direction must neces- 

 sarily rise with the increase of the population and the aug- 

 mented refinements of civilisation, yet the area of supply we 

 see constantly decreasing. The loss on wheat crops during 

 four of the more recent years in the State of Michigan alone, 

 for want of shelter against cutting winds, was estimated at 



