32 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



ishing as to be a matter of serious concern." Commissioner Wilson was 

 especially interested in the matter of tree planting on the plains, and 

 in both succeeding annual reports he devoted considerable attention 

 to this matter. In his report for 1868 he gave a long and detailed 

 account of forest conditions in various countries of the world ; point- 

 ing out warningly the climatic changes which in Spain, Southern 

 France, Italy, Asia Minor, and other regions, were supposed to have 

 resulted from the destruction of the forests. He predicted that within 

 forty or fifty years our own forests would have disappeared, while 

 those of Canada would be approaching exhaustion. "Our live-oak, one 

 of the best ship-timbers in the world," he said, "abundant enough at 

 one time to have supplied, with prudent management, our navy yards 

 and ship builders for generations, may be for all practical purposes 

 considered as exhausted. Our walnut timber . . . will soon share the 

 same fate. . . . Next we may expect a scarcity in our ash and hick- 

 ory so much sought after by the manufacturers of agricultural 

 machines and implements." Like other writers of this period. Com- 

 missioner Wilson put considerable emphasis upon the climatic influ- 

 ence of forests, claiming that in several of the eastern states the 

 destruction of forests had brought such extremes in climate that fruit 

 raising, and even the raising of wheat, had become a very uncertain 

 business. ^^ 



In 1870, R. W. Raymond, United States Commissioner of Mining 

 Statistics, wrote in forcible terms of the wanton destruction of tim- 

 ber in the mining districts of the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast 

 states.^^ Two years later Willis Drummond, Commissioner of the Land 

 Office, called attention to the importance of protecting the forests of 

 the public domain from waste and spoliation, and his appeal for help 

 against the timber thieves was repeated each year, as long as he 

 remained in office.** In 1872, also, C. C. Andrews made a report to the 

 Department of State on the forests and forest culture of Sweden. In 

 1873, John A. Warder, commissioner of the United States at the 

 Vienna International Exposition, prepared his "Report on Forests 

 and Forestry," which was printed two years later. It contained an 



S2 Reports, Land Office, 1866, 33; 1867, 131, 135; 1868, 173-199, 190, 191. 



33 H. Ex. Doc. 207; 41 Cong. 2 sess., 342. 



34 Report, Land Office, 1872, 26, 27. 



