FOREST PLANTING. 129 



opening of the country are the great obstacles to improvement and 

 cultivation, and are therefore destroyed, not only without mercy, but 

 with zest and with utter disregard of the future. 



" ' Already the great forests of New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana 

 and Ohio have been so far depleted that those States resort to Mich- 

 igan and Wisconsin for lumber and timbers for domestic use. True, 

 those States have yet much timber, but they have little or none of the 

 most valuable kinds for export, and they have so well learned its value 

 that they will purchase rather than use their own, preferring to hold it 

 as an investment. 



" ' But how long will the forests of Michigan, Northern Wisconsin 

 and Minnesota stand hefore the treble drain of the older Eastern 

 States, the great prairies and the valley of the Mississippi ? Long be- 

 fore Michigan, Northern Wisconsin or Minnesota, (the only States 

 which can now export timber in large quantities,) shall contain a 

 population one-half as dense as Massachusetts, they will not only 

 cease to export, but will find a scarcity for their own local purposes. 

 #**# * ****** 



" ' It should be borne in mind that to this time our great forests 

 have met the demands and destruction of a gradually rising popula- 

 tion from three to thirty-three millions of people, whilst they were for 

 nearly the whole time diving deeper into the recesses of the unbroken 

 primeval supply. We have now gone through and surrounded this 

 great timber reserve, and we enter upon the margin of the great tree- 

 less waste with our original store three-quarters consumed, the de- 

 mand accelerated, and the consumers to rise rapidly from thirty-three 

 to fifty millions within the last third of this century. A little com- 

 mon arithmetic will satisfy any thinking man of the consequences, 

 and of the proportion which the demand and supply will bear to each 

 other at the close of as compared with the commencement of this 

 century. Extend the time for another five years, with the added pop- 

 ulation, and it will be fortunate if our people get boards three inches 

 wide, as in China at the present time. Is it not apparent that we 

 should at once cease to destroy and commence to produce ?' 



9 



