IMPORTANCE OF THE FORESTS TO 

 AGRICULTURE 



BY 



HON. JOHN LAMB 



Member of Congress from Virginia 



'X'HE preservation of the forests of America is a 

 subject of vast importance, and one that has been 

 too long neglected. 



Should the deliberations of this Congress result in 

 calling the attention of our landowners, farmers and 

 mechanics to this impending national danger, beyond 

 the power of figures to compute, its members and 

 delegates will richly deserve the gratitude of future 

 generations. 



Within the lives of many of us the question of the 

 destruction of the forests did not arise. We have 

 seen the log piles, and witnessed the destruction of 

 millions of feet of the finest timber that ever grew, 

 that the land might be cultivated in com, cotton and 

 tobacco. Some of us have seen this land turned out 

 to grow up in scrub pines and oaks, while fresh forests 

 were denuded of timber that would have enriched the 

 next generation. 



The unnecessary destruction of the forests in this 

 way has brought untold loss to the Alantic States, 

 from New England to the Gulf of Mexico. It has 

 been estimated that in the State of New York alone 

 between 1850 and i860, more than 1,500,000 acres of 

 timber land were cleared for purposes of lumber and 

 agriculture. During that decade more than 50,000,000 

 acres in the whole country were brought under culti- 

 vation. 



