FORESTRY. 45 



swamps, and springs were miieh more plentiful and well supplied 

 than now ; the forest not only retaining the water like a sponge, 

 but furnishing for the soil a shelter from drying winds and scorch- 

 ing suns. Then trees were regarded as the enemy of man, for 

 they were the great obstacle to his gaining a subsistence ; and the 

 forest was cleared and burned with tireless energy, and children 

 were educated to think of it as something to be destro^yed. This 

 went on for several generations and the momentum of the same 

 feeling continues, and people instinctively destroy forests, when 

 the necessity for doing so long ago ceased and they ought to 

 preserve instead of destroying them. Here in America we are 

 steadil}' and rapidly going on to the same catastrophe that has 

 befallen older countries. 



There is an unfortunate tendency in the American people to 

 make money in the present, without much regard for future con- 

 sequences ; and so we have gone on, in a careless, selfish belief that 

 if we destroy' all the lumber we shall somehow find a way to re- 

 place it, until we have come to a point where every intelligent 

 lumberman knows just what supply is left. In a very few years 

 more we shall come to the extinction of the magnificent white pine 

 forests of Michigan and Wisconsin, and then a stop will be put to the 

 settlement of the treeless plains of Dakotah and other territories 

 b}^ people of moderate means, on account of the scarcit}' of material 

 for building, which will all have to be brought across the Rocky 

 Mountains. 



Until recently, no means have been used to diffuse information 

 on this subject, but, depending on our hopeful instincts, we have 

 felt that in America everything is bound to come out about right, 

 and that there is no waste that cannot be supplied. It is true that 

 we can do many things that others cannot, but we must remember 

 that the limitations of human nature exist for us, and that there 

 are some things that cannot be replaced. Animals have become 

 extinct because the conditions under which they lived have passed 

 away. 



Within our own time the careless habits of the hunter have made 

 the bison almost extinct, and he can never be restored ; and the native 

 forest is disappearing with him. Lands once endowed with extreme 

 fertilit}', with as fine forests as ever grew, and having important 

 relations to civilization, have, through loss of the forests, become 

 entirely changed in character. In the State of New York vast 



