40 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[March, 



otherwise the outside will hurn before the in- 

 side is done. 



To Purify Dripping.— Make it hot in a 

 pan, and then pour it in clear water, when 

 it is cold gather it aTid fry out the water, and 

 it will not taste much any more like dripping. 



People who cannot bite radishes should 

 grate them, and season them as they eat 

 them; they are very nice in that way.-ieoKne. 



Essays. 



THE GROWTH AND CONSUMPTION OF 

 TIMBER TREES IN AMERICA.* 

 When in a state of nature, and before 

 Europeans penetrated far into the interior, 

 this country was in all probability covered 

 by a dense forest, for we find that \Vm. Penn 

 held a conference with the Indians under the 

 spreading elm tree at Kensington ; and all 

 other information that has been handed down 

 since 1681 confirms this belief. At the time 

 of the settlement, s lys a distinguished writer, 

 in 1682 the site of PliiUulelphia was a dense 

 forest, a broad expanse of magnificent and il- 

 limitable wilderness, almost untrodden by 

 civilized man. About the year 1720, thirty- 

 eight years afterwards, John Bartram laid out 

 on the banks of the Schuylkill below Phila- 

 delphia, a garden containing a large propor- 

 tion of the vario.-s fore.st trees of iSTorth 

 America. But even so early as the reign 

 of Queen Anne, who occupied the English 

 throne, from 1702 to 1714, an act of parlia- 

 ment was passed "for the protection of forest 

 trees in the English American Colonies ; and 

 by an act passed in 1750 prohibited the felling 

 of white pine trees in the Colonies, unless 

 within private enclosures. About the same 

 time also some of the colonists petitioned the 

 mother country for compulsory legislation re- 

 garding the planting of tree.s by the farmers. 

 Between 1730 and 17.50, fnrnaces for the 

 smelting of iron had been erected in Virginia, 

 Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and New 

 Jersey, and great fears were entertained that 

 the fuel would give out. In later times, and 

 during the early part of the present century, 

 these apprehensions were renewed that the 

 charcoal furnaces would surely cause a scarcity 

 of fuel, but the forests held out until the intro- 

 duction of coal into common use dispelled 

 the popular delusion. But in our times, not- 

 withstanding that the domestic consumption 

 of wood for fuel has to a large extent been 

 superseded by coal, other dangers confront 

 us, that the railroads need immense quanti- 

 ties of white ,oak saplings for ties, and how 

 to meet the demand has vexed some minds 

 greatly. When the necessity arrives no doubt 

 a substitute will be found. We well remem- 

 ber similar fears were entcrtaiued twenty-five" 

 years ago that the locomotives were eating up 

 all the pine wood, but here coal again came 

 to our relief. 



Before the discovery of coal mines and 

 inventions of cheap means of working them, 

 wood was the general fuel of the earth, and 

 in many counties where the arts have not 

 much flouri-shed, it is still the chief fuel. In 

 our country as in all other civilized countries 

 the consumption of timber is immense. Its 

 aptitude to be shaped into a thousand various 



*Read before the Lancaster County Agricultural and 

 Horticultural Society, by C. L. Hunseckor. 



purposes for the comforts, ornaments, and 

 conveniences of society, enhances its value so 

 that we could not well conceive how we could 

 do without it. 



It appears by a hite official report that Min- 

 nesota, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and 

 Texas have an aggregate of 123,000,000,000 

 feet of standing timber, and that during the 

 year 1880 there was cut nearly 1,500,000,000 

 feet, showing in these five States an enormous 

 amount of growing timber trees. 



In other portions of the States and Terri- 

 tories there is more or less forest, and in some 

 of the Western Territories there is no calcu- 

 lation or numbers big enough to measure the 

 amount of the magnificent trees that span 

 the horizon of Washington, Oregon, Alaska, 

 and the Indian Territory ; also of Wash- 

 ington Territory. Governor Newell says there 

 are on tlie borders of Paget Sound 15,000,000 

 acres of the finest timber laud in the world. 

 Thousands of trees are upwards of 300 feet 

 in height and 10 feet in diameter at' the base. 

 The New Orleans Democrat estimates that 

 Louisiana contains more than 17,000,000 acres 

 of wooded land, and the saw mills have made 

 very little impression upon this vast supply of 

 timber, which comprises a large variety of 

 valuable wood, although by the late census 

 it appears there are 30,000 saw mills in the 

 United States, doing a flourishing business. 

 There is an immense amount of pine forest in 

 California, in the State of Maine, in Michi- 

 gan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virgina, Ken- 

 tucky and the Carolinas. 



There are in this country 760,000 square 

 miles of timber, of which the South owns 

 400,000, or nearly two-thirds of the most 

 valuable timber; whilst there are States in 

 the American Union that were forestless a 

 quarter of a century ago that are becoming 

 wooded by the planting of trees, Iowa, Kan- 

 sas, Utah, etc. When the Mormons settled 

 at Salt Lake, in 1847, the country was desti- 

 tute of trees, except what grew on the Wah- 

 satch Mountains, which are covered with 

 pine trees. The Utah valley is highly produc- 

 tive, but few farm houses are found beyond 

 the limits of the towns, which to a distant 

 observer present the appearance of immense 

 orchards, with but here and there a chimney 

 or steeple rising above the trees, indicating 

 the nreseuce of houses. And all this wooded 

 appearance of the towns has been brought 

 about by the policy of tree planting in thirty- 

 three years. 



The broad and rich prairies afford advan- 

 tages to the settlers, which the settlers in the 

 wooded districts of other States do not ap- 

 preciate. But it seldom happens that any 

 spot of land combines all the gifts of Provi- 

 dence. It is there tliat we find the richest 

 lands, charged with the elements of agricul- 

 tural success. There is an absence of trees, 

 which has been considered a serious drawback. 

 Experience, however,has shown the contrary. 

 Those pioneers who weathered the storm and 

 settled the timber lauds of Pennsylvania, 

 Ohio and Indiana, can testify to the weary 

 life time of labor required to clear the breadth 

 of a farm tit for cultivation. On the prairie 

 it is entirely ditlereiit, the farmer can go to 

 work at once with his ox team and plow down 

 the sod on which the tall grass has been grow- 

 ing uninterruptedly for years. 



Chicago, in Illinois, and Toledo, in Ohio, 

 commenced their career at the same time; the 

 first becoming the mart of an extensive prairie 

 country, was easily brought under cultivation, 

 got ten years the start of the latter. Toledo, 

 seated in the midst of the grandest old forest 

 of the plain, had to cut the trees away to get 

 room. The products of a soil of great fertility, 

 which were an incumbrance to the first set- 

 tlers and checked the early growth of the 

 town, but have in later times become a source 

 of great profit. It is even possible for a peo- 

 ple to prosper greatly although they should 

 inhabit a country destitute of forest trees. 

 Holland, in Europe, during the seventeenth 

 century lis foreign commerce and navigation 

 was greater than that of all Europe besides, 

 and yet the country which was the seat of 

 this vast commerce had no native product to 

 export, nor even a piece of timher fit for ship- 

 huildiiHj. 



Iowa was formerly a treeless country, but 

 owing to favorable legislation and the efforts 

 of its enterprising citizens, has by planting 

 forests and orchards became a wooded country. 

 The head of the famous Mississippi river is 

 a dense forest of magnificent pines. 



Thousands of acres of valuable timber are 

 annually destroyed in our country by the 

 forest fires and large quantities of wood left to 

 rot upou the ground, for want of a market 

 near enough to pay the expense of moving it. 

 Professor Buck, of Ontario, Canada, asserted 

 lately that more timber had been destroyed 

 in Canada by forest fires than had been 

 exported, and one of the largest lumber opera- 

 tors of Ontario asserted that there will be no 

 pine left in Canada at the end of twenty years. 

 The dwellings of the early settlers of New 

 England, as well as Pennsylvania and other 

 States, found the forests an incumbrance, and 

 used them almost exclusively for building 

 material. The houses and other buildings 

 were mostly constructed with hewn logs, some 

 of which are still standing and occupied, 

 though brick, stone and mortar are fast re- 

 placing them. 



Out West they have a yearly holiday called 

 "Arbor Day," on which the people plant 

 trees. Minnesota has already millions of 

 saplings on her stretches and knobs. Iowa 

 everywhere shows that her once bare prairies 

 are to have their horizon broken into pic- 

 turesqueness and color by the maple and the 

 elm. Men plant trees, which is an emblem 

 of civilization — Na|)oleon's willow, Shaks- 

 peare'smulberry; and Bryant's beautiful poem, 

 "The Planting of the Apple Tree," sheds its 

 variegated blossoms to the memory of the 

 poet. 



In consequence of the great consumption by 

 the furnaces iu England of timber, they were 

 restrained by act of Parliament in 1581. 

 Soon after this Lord Dudley invented the 

 process of smelting iron ore with pit coal in- 

 stead of wood fuel. Although of immense 

 value to the country, tlie works were destroyed 

 by an ignorant rabble, and the inventor was 

 well nigh ruined. But iu the early part of the 

 eighteenth century the consumption of timber 

 was so great and the complaint so well found- 

 ed that the wood fuel would give out, that in 

 1740 Dudley's process for using pit coal in- 

 stead of wood was generally adopted, and the 

 iron business greatly increased up to the pres- 



