American Forest Congress 407 



cap of a rock that covers it — and yet in a few years it 

 is destroyed, and the factories that were built over it 

 with the understanding that an everlasting source of 

 supply existed underneath, find themselves once more 

 shipping coal from hundreds of miles away in order to 

 supply their furnaces. The same is true with oil ; the 

 same with the beasts of the forests and the birds of the 

 air. People destroy them with a wantonness that al- 

 most looks like malignity; and all these natural re- 

 sources of the great United States of America are 

 involved, either directly or indirectly in the questions 

 that you are going to discuss. While preserving the 

 forests you will preserve the animals that roam therein ; 

 while preserving the forests will give shelter to the 

 birds of the air that make their nests therein. It is 

 too late to save the wild pigeon, perhaps. The count- 

 less millions that used to break down the woods by 

 their weight have disappeared, and the advent of a 

 dozen wild pigeons in the State of New York is taken 

 up by the Associated Press and published far and wide 

 as a wonderful thing: "A dozen wild pigoens were 

 seen in western New York day before yesterday." 

 And yet, within the lifetime of my young friend Pin- 

 chot, and I refer to him because I look to him for the 

 future of the forests, in the lifetime of even the young- 

 est members present here, this magnificent bird has 

 practically disappeared from the face of the earth. I 

 know my friend, the Secretary of Agriculture, will not 

 fully agree with me upon the importance of the preser- 

 vation of the buffalo ; but I expect some day to get him 

 to entirely agree with me. 



This is a day of progress. It is not very long ago 

 that men rejoiced at the destruction of the buffalo, 

 because it opened the way for the white man in the 

 West. We took up the subject in Congress some years 



