" THE LEAVES OF THE TREE W6T6 FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 67 



FOREST ANNIHILATION IN CALIFORNIA, A STUDY. 



( From the 8. F. Morning Call, May 28tfi, 1893.) 



"The forests of California are among the wonders of the world, and the lumber in- 

 dustries they give rise to are among the most important on the coast. The chief 

 growth is the redwood, which yields so enormously that the State Board of Forestry 

 estimates that redwood forests comprise half the timber in California, and this 

 though the redwood is confined to the coast, while the area of timber lands in the 

 interior is many times more than that on the coast. Other trees used in the lumber 

 trade are sugar pines, often found 8 feet in diameter and of immense height with- 

 out flaw; willow, cotton wood, sycamore, oaks of all kinds (including cheetnut oak, 

 whose bark tans the famed California sole leather), laurel or bay wood. Redwood 

 burl is an excrescence growing on the sides of the tree, which makes elegant 

 veneering. 



"In the United States there are 466,000,000 acres of timber land exclusive of 

 Alaska. Of these 53,000,000 are divided among the Pacific States. These do not 

 include unmerchantable timber. California has a forest area of more than 18,- 

 000,000 acres. Some idea of the volume of the lumber industry may be gathered 

 from a brief presentation of figures regarding it taken from a single representative 

 county Humboldt. Of 938,000 acres in Humboldt County classified as timber 

 lands about 538,000 were originally covered with redwood forest, leaving about 

 400,000 acres of other timber divided about equally among pine, spruce, fir and 

 cedar lands, and lands covered principally with madrone and laurel and tanbark, 

 and white, black and live oaks. Of the redwood lands some 39,500 acres have now 

 been cut and sawed into about 4,000,000,000 feet of timber, leaving 498,500 acres 

 standing, which at the conservative estimate of 100,000 feet per acre will produce 

 49,850,000,000 feet of lumber. The present rate of cutting is about 200,000,000 

 feet of lumber per year. 



"From the port of Eureka the lumber fleet, together with the passenger steamers, 

 took away during 1891, 152,517, 613 feet of lumber, which includes shakes, shingles, 

 pickets, etc., valued at $2,897,834. Of this amount 9,998,663 went to foreign 

 ports, as follows : 



To Honolulu ............................................ 3,937,193 



To Sydney ............... ..................... ......... 3,796,644 



To Guaymas, Mexico .............................. ..... 450>l 5i 



To LaPaz, Lower California ............. ................ ooaoS 



To Valparaiso ......................................... 332,336 



ToCallao .............................................. 284,007 



To Victoria, B. C ...................................... 182,679 



To Central America ................................ ~ *; J'5H 



To Tahiti .............................................. 208 > 951 



"Fresno is another large lumber center, as is Mendocino, and altogether it has 

 been estimated that the annual production of lumber in the State is not less than 

 300000000 feet. Dr. Kellogg, in his "Forest Trees of California, says that 

 " probably from a fair estimate of the redwood along our coast it would not com- 

 prise more than 3000 square miles of forest land." 



-The amount of timber now standing has been variously estimated^ ating all 

 wav from 25 000,000,000 to 100,000,000,000 feet board measure. While in sc 

 rectionsUie iand'will not yield more than from 10,000 to 15,000 feet per acre there 

 are others which will yield from 250,000 to 500,000 feet, so it will be see* L how Dif- 

 ficult it is to figure the total closely. As previously indicated the redwood belt is 

 located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, and between it and the mterio] o. f the 

 State lies the Coast Range. For this reason the railroad touches it ; at on y ^one or 

 two points, and almost the entire product is transported by wa n t f ft r - pd ^e1Sn ber- 

 eailing vessels are used for this purpose, and the capital employed i ^e lumber 

 carrying trade is a very important factor in the commercial interest ^of 'our bL 



" There are about forty mills engaged in cutting redwood, the largest having a 



