FORESTKY AND AEBORICULTURE. 59 



students to attend a school of forestry, if one should be 

 established, or can we ever have a forest policy or a system 

 of forest protection and preservation worthy of the name. 



If the first work of the Government was merely the estab- 

 lishment of a forest guard, and nothing more be accom- 

 plished than to partially restrict the forest fires which are 

 now so destructive, it is certain that an amount of timber 

 would annually be saved much exceeding in value the cost 

 of such service. 



Even here in Massachusetts, notwithstanding the compar- 

 atively small size of the treos and the isolation of the forests 

 themselves, and in the face of the penalties affixed for set- 

 ting forest fires, there was destroyed in 1880 alone wood 

 to the vakie of upwards of one hundred thousand dollars, — 

 ■covering fourteen thousand acres of land.* This fear of 

 fire discourages investments in woodlands and sends capital, 

 which naturally would be used for this purpose, in other 

 directions in search of greater security. 



The injury done to woodlands by browsing animals, by 

 exterminating seedling trees, and barking those of larger 

 growth, is, on the whole, as great, and in many cases greater, 

 than that done by fires. Browsing domestic animals not 

 only injure the woodlands directly, but they j^revent a future 

 growth by eating the seeds as well as the young trees. 



The preference shown by hogs for the sweet fruit of the 

 white oak, beech and chestnut is causing these species to 

 become replaced in our forests by less valuable but bitter 

 fruited trees. In California, too, the sheep are endangering 

 the life and perpetuation of some of the finest forests in the 

 world, f The unscientific methods of farming which permit 

 this practice are to be condemned and should be corrected at 

 once. 



It would be a wiser economy for us in Massachusetts to 

 provide pasturage for browsing animals by a higher cultiva- 

 tion of the land, so that the largest number could be pastured 

 on the fewest acres. It is certainly a bad policy which 

 obliges cattle to travel all day for a miserable subsistence. 



• Forests of N. A. Rep. U. S. Census, 1880, Vol. IX., p. 500. 

 t Ibid., p. 492. See also " The Earth as Modified by Human Action," G. P. Marsh, 

 p. 382. 



