286 



CONSERVATION 



Our forests are now producing not 

 more than twelve cubic feet of wood 

 per acre per year ; Germany's forests 

 are producing forty-eight cubic feet an- 

 nually. In other words, she has re- 

 duced waste and consumption and in- 

 creased production. We have as rapid 

 growing species and as good forest soil 

 as Germany has. Shall we fail in meet- 



ing our problem? I do not think so. 

 As admirably stated by the President, 

 the conservation of natural resources 

 means "the application of common 

 sense to common problems for the com- 

 mon good." 



(Read at annual meeting of National As- 

 sociation of Box Manufacturers, Chatta- 

 nooga, Tenn., February 23, 1909.) 



AIMLESS TREE SLAUGHTER 



By M. E, BAKER 



THERE was a man who lived in and called it very good, and the mad- 

 New England, whose name was ness left him. He never returned to 

 Legion. Nine-tenths of the time finish clearing up the roadside. He 

 he tilled his land and mended stone never covered the bared rocks, or lev- 

 fences, like a moral and intelligent be- eled the ragged banks. The ground 

 ing; and the tenth part of the time a bristled with stubble of trees, and their 

 madness came upon him an hereditary boughs rotted where they fell, 

 madness. He remembered subcon- The only times when the man re- 

 sciously how his ancestors wrested the visited the roadside were when he cast 

 soil from the forests, and did battle old stovepipes and broken china, in a 

 with the foes that lurked in their heap, a few hundred yards from his 

 depths, and he seized his ax and went dwelling. 



forth to take vengeance upon the forest, What shall be done for the madness 



for the hostile front it showed his eld- of this man ? He is not to be greatly 



ers. But the forest was gone, and the frighted with droughts or floods, and 



only soil he could find to wrest was he has no regard in his heart for the 



beside the town roads, on either hand. landscape. He does not desire shade 



This, then, he fell upon with right good 

 will. There were oaks, and these he 

 cut down, wastefully two feet from the 

 ground and scattered their branches 

 about. There were walnuts and birches 

 and beeches, and he felled them all, and 

 hewed them into bits. There was red 



trees. Would legislation avail for his 

 cure, or psycho-therapy, or beating 

 with many stripes? If this last were 

 done speedily, there are still birches left 

 by the roadsides wherewith to do it. 

 But if he is not restrained before long, 

 New England will be, here and there 



cedar, with its priceless worth, and its among its towns, in like con lition with 



heart of fragrance and this he hacked Japan, which has no need to make laws 



and haggled and utterly destroyed, to protect its birds, because the birds 



Then he looked upon what he had done, are all slaughtered. 



