60 HAND-BOOK OF TREE-PLANTING. 



With them may be classed the sycamore 

 and the maples, which are at home throughout 

 a wide extent of our country, and offer them- 

 selves for a great variety of uses. The}'' are 

 among our most valuable trees for fuel, and, 

 with all our use of lumber in the arts and for 

 building purposes, it is to be remembered that 

 three fourths of the legitimate demand upon 

 the forests is for fuel. In our general esti- 

 mates of the value and importance of the for- 

 ests, we perhaps lose sight of their value in 

 this respect. But this, after all, is their chief 

 and commonest use. Coal may lessen the de- 

 mand upon the forests for fuel, in some places, 

 and for a certain length of time. But the coal- 

 mines are not inexhaustible. Coal does not 

 grow wood does. The English have already 

 begun to forecast the time when their coal- 

 fields will be exhausted. What, then, will re- 

 main for them but to bring their fuel from 

 abroad? And what will be the condition of 

 their great manufacturing industries, when the 

 fuel which drives their machinery has to be 

 brought from afar instead of being mined cheap- 

 ly at home ? Put off the time of the exhaustion 



