WARNINGS FROM HISTORY 311 



ethnographical enigma which is here propounded to 

 us, is the following: The hills and slopes there were 

 once stocked with lumber, which was wasted by the 

 inhabitants. The same deterioration of the country 

 gradually took place which we notice in Palestine, 

 Greece, and Sicily, where the people had to emigrate 

 to avoid starvation. 



But enough of the warning examples of history. 



It is not too late to repair all the damage that has 

 been done in America by the devastation of our 

 natural forests. A regulation of the use of the timber 

 may be effected without any injury to the legitimate 

 lumber trade, and the replanting as well as the estab- 

 lishment of artificial forests, may undoubtedly be 

 madf ..profitable for private as well as for public 

 enterprise. If it is remunerative to acclimatize and 

 extensively raise American trees in Germany and 

 France, where the soil is much higher in price than 

 here, why should it not be lucrative to cultivate them 

 in those parts of the United States in which the 

 timber is scarce and precious? They grow quicker 

 here and to greater perfection than anywhere else. 

 Nature has lavishly provided this country with an 

 uncommonly large number of the most valuable 

 species of trees. There are not more than thirty- 

 five species and distinct varieties of native trees in 

 France which attain a height of over thirty feet, not 

 more than sixty-five in Germany, but over one hun- 

 dred and fifty in the upper part of the Mississippi 



