FORESTRY AT HOME. 83 



The feeling of hostility to the forest which grew up 

 among the early settlers continued and increased among 

 their descendants long after all reason for it had dis- 

 appeared. But even in the early days far-sighted men 

 began to consider the safety of the forest. In 1653 the 

 authorities of Charlestown, in Massachusetts, forbade 

 the cutting of timber on the town lands without per- 

 mission from the selectmen, and in 1689 the neighboring 

 town of Maiden fixed a penalty of 5 shillings for cutting 

 trees less than 1 foot in diameter for fuel. An ordinance 

 of William Penn, made in 1681, required that 1 acre 

 of land be left covered with trees for every 5 acres 

 cleared. But these measures were not well followed 

 up, and the needless destruction of the forest went 

 steadily on. 



FIRST STEPS IN FORESTRY. 



More than a hundred years later, in 1795, a commit- 

 tee of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, 

 Arts, and Manufactures in New York made a report 

 on the best way to preserve and increase the growth 

 of timber. Four years afterwards Congress appropri- 

 ated $200,000 for the purchase and preservation of 

 timberlands to supply ship timbers ior the Navy, and 

 in 1822, with the same object in view, it authorized the 

 President to employ the Army and Navy to protect and 

 preserve the live oak and red cedar timber of the Gov- 

 ernment in Florida. Since that time more and more 

 attention has been given to the forests. In 1828 

 Governor DeWitt Clinton, of New York, spoke of the 

 reproduction of our woods as an object of primary 

 importance, and in the same year the Government began 

 an attempt to cultivate live oak in the South for the use 



