548 



THE FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



through which the prairie fires swept, destroying all nuclei-growth, without doing great injury to the full-grown 

 trees. Prairie fires have gradually decreased in frequency and violence since the settlement of the state, and 

 these open groves are now filled with a vigorous growth of young seedlings and shoots ; their characteristic features 

 have disappeared, and the area of the forest is gradually increasing. 



The shores of lake Michigan are covered with a stunted growth of white pine; the dry, rocky hillsides in the 

 western part of Union county, one of the southern counties of the state, bear a few yellow pines (Pinus mitis), and 

 cypress is found in the southern river swamps. With these exceptions, of little importance commercially, the 

 forests of Illinois are composed of deciduous species. 



During the census year only 48,691 acres of woodland were reported destroyed by fire, with an estimated loss of 

 $45,775. These fires were generally traced to hunters, and to farmers permitting brush fires to escape to the forest. 



The production of cooperage stock was once an important industry in southern Illinois. The business has 

 greatly diminished, owing to the exhaustion of the local supply of the best hard woods. Bass, gum, hackberry, 

 elm, sycamore, and other woods formerly considered of little value, are substituted for oak, and Illinois now receives 

 most of its hard wood from Kentucky, Tennessee, and other southern states. 



Illinois is eleventh among the states in the volume of its lumber-manufacturing interests. It owes this position 

 to the fact that many large mills sawing pine logs rafted down the Mississippi river from the forests of Wisconsin 

 are established within its borders, and not to the extent and value of the forests of the state. The manufacture 

 of Illinois-grown lumber is small and totally inadequate to supply the wants of the present population of the state. 



Chicago, owing to its general commercial importance and its position with reference to the great pine forests 

 of the northwest, has become the greatest lumber-distributing center in the world. 



According to the statistics gathered by the Northwestern Lumberman of Chicago, and published in that journal 

 January 29, 1881, there were received in Chicago during the year 1880 1.419,974,000 feet of lumber by lake and 

 145,563,118 feet by rail, a total of 1,565,537,118 feet, an increase of 96,817,127 feet over the total receipts of 1879; 

 650,022,500 shingles were received during the same year. 



Lumber was received from the lake ports during the year 1880, as follows : 



