ASPECTS OF THE PRESENT FORESTRY AGITATION. 131 



A rapid glance backward would possibly be at once the easiest 

 and the surest method of reaching a conclusion. Two hundred 

 and eighty years ago all that region, with which we are now so 

 familiar, between the Atlantic seaboard and the crest of the 

 Alleghany Mountains, and from Nova Scotia to Georgia, to say 

 nothing of Florida, was practically an unbroken forest. Only 

 here and there, two centuries ago, did a community or an individ- 

 ual for a moment dream that a scarcity of timber could occur in a 

 country where the forests were so dense and so vast. It is 

 singular too that all of those who were far seeing enough to 

 anticipate a possible future scarcity of wood were born in Europe. 

 The next generation, the native born Americans, were, probably 

 without exception, or certainly with ver}' rare exceptions, 

 impressed with the view that their woodland heritage could never 

 or would never be exhausted. What was west of the Alleghany 

 Mountains was hardly more than conjecture with the people at 

 large. 



Each colony was then practically self-supporting in timber. 

 This is probabh' all the histor}' we need refer to. But after onl}' 

 a little more than two and a half centuries, with a comparatively 

 small population operating on the timbered half of our continent, 

 how many of the northern States, in the region indicated, are now 

 absolutely self-supporting in timber? Few, if any. Or, to put 

 the problem in another form : How does the timber brought to 

 your markets today compare in quality with that furnished a 

 quarter of a century ago ? Does not the smaller size, and the lower 

 grade at once indicate that the best is gone ? Or, more directly 

 still, take the most recent and apparently reliable utterance of 

 Professor Prentiss, who has made our Hemlock Spruce a subject 

 of special study : 



'' It may therefore, be estimated that the full value of the 

 products of the hemlock is, in round numbers, thirty millions of 

 dollars per annum." Yet almost in the same breath he adds, 

 *'The length of time during which our remaining hemlock forests 

 will sustain this annual drain is, of course, uncertain ; but the 

 the most careful and conservative observers consider that the 

 present supply could not be maintained for a period exceeding 

 twenty or twenty-five years. It becomes, therefore, a question of 

 great practical importance as to the way in which the existing 

 demands upon the hemlock shall be hereafter supplied." 



