FOREST PLANTING. 99 



is condensed from a very interesting essay, published in 

 the transactions of the Illinois Horticultural Society : 



" Timber, both hard and soft, is rapidly disappearing from our 

 forests. At the present rate of denudation it will be but compara- 

 tively a short time until its price will be beyond the limits of the 

 general industries for which it is now used. European countries 

 have been drawing for years upon American forests for a large part of 

 their supplies. Over 800,000 acres of timber are annually cut in the 

 three great States of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, while but 

 150,000 acres are annually planted in all the States. In 1869, 1,750,- 

 000,000 feet of lumber were sent to the lake ports of Lake Michigan 

 from the forests of Michigan and Wisconsin." 



Col. J. W. Foster, in his very valuable and interesting 

 work on the " Mississippi Valley," says : 



" In the United States the destruction of the forest is going on at 

 an accelerated pace. The lumber trees of Maine, in accesible posi- 

 tions, are nearly exhausted, and twenty years more will accomplish 

 the same result with regard to the extensive pineries of Michigan and 

 Wisconsin. The white pine is the most valuable lumber tree of 

 America. The ease with which it is wrought ; its freedom as com- 

 pared with most trees, from shrinking, swelling and warping ; and its 

 durability when properly protected by paint, make it the principal 

 tree employed in the construction of a vast majority of houses, and 

 even fences and sidewalks. To one who realizes how rapidly the 

 sources of supply are becoming exhausted, and the prodigality with 

 which it is used, it cannot but be disheartening. It is a tree of slow 

 growth, and the surface on which it grows, when disrobed, is unfit for 

 profitable agriculture. The annual receipts of pine lumber at Chicago 

 alone are in excess of 730,000,000 feet, 400,000,000 shingles, and 

 24,000,000 of lath. Possessing a material within easy reach and on 

 the banks of a canal, known as the Athens limestone, unequalled for 

 flagging and building, and having a river whose dredgings are capa- 

 ble of conversion into brick, it is a singular fact which strikes every 



