A NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY. 7 



pure science, to try and form some conception of the magni- 

 tude of an interest that has been so conspicuous an element in 

 the material development of the Commonwealth. Briefly, 

 then, as early as 1881 the aggregate value of the forest prod- 

 ucts of the State was estimated to have reached more than a 

 billion dollars, and now after half a century of lumbering, and 

 after the closing of one great mill after another and removal 

 of the operators to other fields, the State of Michigan alone 

 produced in 1897, 2,335,000,000 feet of lumber and 

 1,284,000,000 shingles. These figures may produce no real 

 conception of what they stand for, but they may help us in 

 some measure to appreciate the fact that the prosperity of the 

 State has been due very largely, if not chiefly, to its forests, 

 and that the State must inevitably suffer a loss not easily esti- 

 mated through the certain diminution of this great source of 

 wealth. 



We may now raise the question whether all this is any 

 concern of the State, whether as a Commonwealth it is under 

 any obligation to seriously take up the question of forest 

 reserves and State control, and, if so, what can be done? And, 

 in the second place, we may inquire whether individual citi- 

 zens, and especially those who have had scientific training, 

 have a duty in the premises. 



There is a school of sociologists who hold that the func- 

 tions of government should be reduced rather than extended; 

 that they govern best who govern least; and that "the good 

 of the nation is attained by inactivity rather than by active 

 exertion of the government, by allowing the individual to 

 work out his own salvation (or damnation) amid the free and 

 unrestricted play of natural forces, rather than making them 

 do so." Such laissez-faire doctrines, however, will hardly ap- 

 peal, to that more enlightened and healthy public sentiment 

 that regards the function of government as legitimately exer- 

 cised " wherever co-operation of the whole will accomplish the 

 end aimed at by society better than individual effort." * 



*Fernow, B. E., Science, Vol. II., p. 258. 



