79 



FOREST DESTRUCTION : ITS CAUSES AND RESULTS.* 

 FORESTS OF UNITED STATES. 



In his book, " The Earth as Modified by Human Action," Mr. George P. 

 Marsh devotes considerable space to the effects upon the earth's surface and the 

 conditions of human life which have followed the removal of forests both in 

 Europe and America. Some of the more pertinent paragraphs are herewith 

 .appended : 



It is, perhaps, a misfortune to the American Union that the State Govern- 

 ments have so generally disposed of their original domain to private citizens. 



Within the memory of almost every man of mature age timber was of so 

 little value in the northernmost States that the owners of private woodlands sub- 

 mitted, almost without complaint, to what would be regarded elsewhere as very 

 aggravated trespasses upon them. Persons in want of timber helped themselves to 

 it wherever they could find it, and a claim for damages for so insignificant a 

 wroncr as cutting down and carrying off a few pine or oak trees was regarded as 

 a mean-spirited act in a proprietor. The habits formed at this period are not 

 altogether obsolete, and even now the notion of a common right of property in 

 the woods still lingers, if not as an opinion at least as a sentiment. Under such 

 circumstances it has been difficult to protect the forest, whether it belonged to 

 the State or to individuals. Property of this kind is subject to plunder as well as 

 to frequent damage by fire. 



It is evidently a matter of the utmost importance that the public and 

 especially land-owners be aroused to a sense of the dangers to which the 

 indiscriminate clearing of the woods may expose, not only future generations, 

 but the very soil itself. 



Some of the American States, as well as the Governments of many European 

 colonies, still retain the ownership of great tracts of primitive woodland. The 

 State of New York, for example, has in its north-eastern counties a vast extent of 

 territory in which the lumberman has only here and there established his camp, 

 and where the forest, though interspersed with permanent settlements, robbed 

 of some of its finest pine groves, and often ravaged by devastating fires, still 

 covers far the largest proportion of the surface. Through this territory the soil is 

 generally poor, and even the new clearings have little of the luxuriance of harvest 

 which distinguishes them elsewhere. The value of the land for agricultural uses 

 is therefore very small, and few purchases are made for any other purpose than 

 to strip the soil of its timber. It is desirable that some large and easily accessible 

 region of American soil should remain, as far as possible, in its primitive condition, 

 at once a museum for the instruction of the student, a garden for the recreation of 

 the lover of nature, and an asylum where indigenous tree and humble plant that 

 loves the shade, and fish and fowl and four-footed beast may dwell and perpetuate 

 their kind, in the enjoyment of such imperfect protection as the laws of a people 

 jealous of restraint can afford them. The immediate loss to the public treasury 

 from the adoption of this policy would be inconsiderable, for these lands are sold at 

 low rates. The forest alone, economically managed, would without injury, and 

 even with benefit to its permanence and growth, yield a regular income larger 

 than the present value of the fee. 



*Marsh ; The Earth as Modified by Human Action. 



