TIMBER. RESOUECES OF MAINE. 395 



In preparing the following statements, we have studiously avoided 

 giving credit to any representations that appeared intended to unduly 

 enhance or depreciate the value of timber-lands or forest-products, or 

 to promote, in any way, a private interest. But believing that a reali- 

 zation of the direct and incidental benefits to be derivetl from a due 

 proportion of woodlands of the country would lead to greater care in 

 their maintenance, and to measures tending to prevent waste, we have 

 endeavored to show that this belief is sustained by facts, and therefore 

 worthy of general acceptance. 



The inconveniences and physical evils attending a destitution of wood- 

 land can largely be prevented by appropriating a certain proportion 

 of each farm to the growth of forest-trees. There is reason to believe, 

 that if one-fifth of each farm on the prairies were given to this culture, 

 the remainder would more than yield what is now realized from the 

 whole, on account of the favoring conditions of climate which the pres- 

 ence of scattered woodlands would induce. 



It will be noticed that of some States no ^formation is given in the 

 following pages, and of others but a few statistics of particular indus- 

 tries or other facts of a local nature. ITumerous data have been col- 

 lected concerning lumber-markets and the timber-trade, the inland and 

 coastwise transportation of forest products, laws and usages of inspec- 

 tion, range of prices and influences that have aftected them, and other 

 information of a practical kind, which, however, still leave too many 

 points to be supplied, and must for this reason be omitted from the 

 present report. 



MAINE. 



The commercial and ship-building interests of this State are presented 

 in the statistical part of tbis report.^ The former are but partially rep- 

 resented in the general tables of exportation, because, under the treaty 

 of Washington, citizens of the State are allowed to export their prod- 

 ucts by way of the Saint John and Saint Croix Rivers. 



The Saint John district of Maine, being the part north of a line run 

 from Grand Falls to a point between Baker Lake and Boundary Branch, 

 forms quite a distinct botanical district, which, in the state of nature, 

 bore a thick growth of the evergreen trees, generally of good size and 

 valuable for timber. South of this we find a prevalence of the hard 

 woods, such as maples, beeches, oaks, and amentaceous forms of forest 

 growth. 



Mr. Calvin Chamberlain, of Foxcroft, Me., in a lecture delivered in 

 1868, in speaking of the effect of clearing forests in Maine, remarks : 



I designed to speak of the already destitute condition of some neighborhoods on the 

 coast-line of our State, in regard to timber and fuel, -where all the farmers in the 



the preservation of timber-lands, the injuries resulting from fires, insect ravages, dis- 

 ease, waste, and other causes, and the economical value of forests, and forests generally, 

 as well in regard to the benefits they may bring to their owners as to the public gen- 

 erally. Although, for the most part, nothing but estimates, they were generally from 

 persons well known in tbe communities in which they live, and not a few are widely 

 aaid favorably known. They are persons who have no theories to defend, with respect 

 to the unsettled points involved in the forest-question, and no motives for statements 

 beyond the plain results of their own observation and local knowledge. 



• The allusions to statistics of ship-building, and the exportation of forest products, 

 refer to a portion of this report of sufiicient extent for a separate volume, embracing 

 these data from the organization of the government in 1789 down to the present time, 

 with ample generalizations, calculations of percentages and prices, and graphic illus- 

 trations. This part had not been ordered for printing at the time of publication of 

 this volume. 



