FORESTRY AND ARBORICULTURE. 53 



unfavorable conditions."* The cause of their success is that 

 they took their lessons from nature and not from foreign 

 books, and used for their plantations the trees natural to the 

 soil. 



Owing to the natui'e of our American institutions we have 

 in this country a much more difficult problem to solve, in 

 determining the methods by which to preserve existing for- 

 ests and to replant those already destroyed, than is encoun- 

 tered in Europe, where public opinion is already educated to 

 comprehend the necessity of stringent forest laws. To quote 

 again the report first referred to:| — "A forest law to 

 effect its purpose must rest on a broad and solid basis 

 of public interest. The only real safety for the forest will 

 be found in the appreciation of its value by the com- 

 munity." 



The terrible destruction of the forests in this country, 

 pursued of late years in the most wickedly wasteful manner, 

 c()inl)ined with the forest fires, but little restricted as yet 

 (and which annually destroy more timber than is used for 

 all mechanical purposes together), if continued, will trans- 

 form into deserts some of the most beautiful and valuable 

 territory in the United States, and convert lands which 

 might be perpetually covered with timber into woodless, 

 uninhabitable barrens. 



It has been estimated that the immense consumption of 

 white pine, together with the wasteful methods practised in 

 cutting it, will entirely exhaust the marketable supply in the 

 three great pine-producing states of Michigan, Wisconsin 

 and Minnesota in " a comparatively short time."| And 

 even if the vast resources of the South be added, and all the 

 woods capable of being used interchangeably with pine be 

 summed together, it will take but fifty years, § at even the 

 present rate of consumption, to produce a similar effect in 

 the whole United States. This has led speculators to pur- 

 chase large areas of Western and Southern forests. 



* Some additional notes on tree planting. C. S. Sargent, Rep. State Bd. Ag. 

 Mass. 1885, p. 377. 



t Report Forest Commis. State N. Y., 1885, p. 28. 



J Report U. S. Census 1880, Vol. IX., p. 490. " Twelve or fifteen years " is givcu 

 as an estimate of the time by the N. Y. Nation, Feb. 16, 1882. 



^ See Rep. U. S. Ag. Div. Forestry, B. E. Fernow, 1886, p. 157. 



