12 



PAPERS BEAD BEFORE THE ASSOCIATION. 



used: "We want these trees in the valley 

 and on the plains, along our water-courses 

 and on our mountain slopes. Once destroyed 

 j'-rt's will not replace them. They are already 

 passing away. A few years ago, when I firs 

 visited the State, their death-fires gleamed 

 like the camp-fires of an avenging enemj 

 along the eastern slopes of the snowy range 

 and every year they are burning. What the 

 fire spares the ax destroys. Whoever makes 

 war upon these forests, makes war upon our 

 civilization, our prosperity, our happiness 

 They are cutting off our supply of water, dry 

 ing our fountains, blighting our forests. * 



"The mountains are our strong and mighty 

 friends. From them proceed all fertility of 

 soil, and all healthfulness of climate. Their 

 red granite and gray limestones, and sand- 

 stones, crumbling, make the soil of these 

 plains. They are a shelter from storms. In 

 their sunset shadows, we find rest. They 

 temper the heat of our summers, moderate 

 the cold of our winters. They are camped 

 along our western horizon, like the white 

 tents of an army. Their banner is the cloud 

 They are the breastworks of our land. They 

 *.re full of treasure, rich in silver and gold 

 But there is a treasure as great as these, in 

 the snow, folded, like a mantle, around their 

 shining summits. But for this, all of the 

 land would be as desolate as a field of death. 

 In the snow are the wheat,, and the corn, and 

 the fruit of the vine. It holds the golden 

 harvests that are to wave on the plains be- 

 low. And the trees are the protectors, the 

 guardian spirits, of the snow. Therefore, we 

 repeat, protect the trees.'' 



Could Doctor Edwards be with us here, to- 

 day, there would be no more earnest advocate 

 hi behalf of a State society for the protection 

 of our forests. 



Years ago a President of the New York 

 State Agricultural Society, in an address be- 

 fore that body, said: "Has the wholesale 

 destruction of forests nothing to do with 

 this sweeping over and beyond us, of the 

 heavy rain clouds? Can we continue to 

 sweep away all our growth of timber in 

 every arable district and even denude our 

 rocky hillsides and mountain tops without 

 incurring the penalty? Can we expect to 

 escape the operations of a universal law that 

 has produced uniform results in all countries 

 and in !! ages? Wherever this law has been 

 violated, sooner or later, the lands have be- 

 come desolate and the cities have perished. 

 Palestine and Syria, Egypt and Italy and 

 Spain and even France, bave seen their 

 most fertile and prosperous regions turned 

 into forsaken wildernesses and their most 

 productive lands into arid, sandy deserts." 

 Well may we echo the question put in 1868 



to the California Soate Horticultural Society 

 by a speaker who quoted the above language: 

 "If New York, which has naturally a moist 

 climate, is so soon beginning to experience 

 the deleterious effects of a destruction of her 

 forests, what will we be, years from now, if 

 our people go on as they have for the past 

 fifteen years, recklessly sweeping the timber 

 before them as they settle up the country or 

 even in advance of such settlement?" 



Let us, here in Colorado, heed the lesson 

 before it is too late. Let our newspapers take 

 up the subject and discuss it in the interest 

 of the general welfare of the State and not 

 be doing, as did a Boulder County paper 

 four years ago, be boasting of the 20,000 acres 

 of mountain sides in one vast forest, whose 

 tall trees were being cut down for a saw- 

 mill, and extolling the enterprise of the 

 men who were doing what at the same time 

 Dr. Edwards was so severely condemning. 

 The editor forgot, in his pride of local 

 enterprise, that he was nursing a viper to 

 sting the community in the years when the 

 St. Vrain and the Boulder a'nd the Big 

 Thompson Creeks were to run dry in sum- 

 mer because this very 2,000 acres of forest 

 had been destroyed. Nature gives us enough 

 to contend with here, without our own 

 hands adding to the burden. We have dry 

 and rainless summers. We have hot winds 

 that drain our valley soil of moisture, that 

 sponge out of existence the water of ^ , . 

 mountain streams, and the admonition comes 

 to us, in language that we cannot mistake, 

 that we must arrest the destruction of our 

 forests or be ourselves destroyed. 



It is the theory of many persons that the 

 natural rainfall of Colorado is increasing, 

 and that the time is coming when but little 

 rrigation will be required for the growth of 

 ;rops. Never was theory so fallacious, and 

 he who builds upon it builds upon the sands 

 f error. What are the facts, taking the rain- 

 all of the last ten years in Colorado, in the 

 vicinity ef Denver, as a basis? Here is the 

 ecord : 



Inches. 

 874 13.451879 



875.. 



876 20 12 



17.251880 9.58 



877. 



878 15.51 



16.381882 14.49 



Total 82.71 



Average inches... 16.54 



Inches. 

 . 10.86 



1881 12.79 



1883 19.49 



Total 67.21 



Average inches... 13.44 



Does this not show an aver?,ge decrease of 

 >ver three inches yearly ? To what can we 

 ook as the cause, unless it be in the denud- 

 ng of our vast timber ranges. 



The rain record of Idaho tells a similar 

 tory. From 1873 to anc* including 1877, the 



