350 



FORESTRY. 



people of this country a love of trees or a 

 strong 8ense of their value. On the contrary, 

 it cheapened them in their esteem, and made 

 them ready to sacrifice them for slight reasons. 

 We have parted with them freely, and for 

 small considerations. Trespass upon wood- 

 land has not been regarded like trespass upon 

 other lands, nor visited with similar punish- 

 ment. We have suffered the fires, originating 

 in carelessness, or set, as they have been some- 

 times, in wantonness, to waste the forests to 

 the extent of millions of acres annually, and 

 have made hardly any effort to prevent such 

 destruction. 



And when, by the growth of population and 

 the development of the country, the forests be- 

 came increasingly valuable for their lumber, 

 we have produced this in a most careless and 

 wasteful manner. The lumber-men have culled 

 the largest and best trees, those that could be 

 most easily and cheaply converted into lum- 

 ber, and have used only the best portions of 

 these even, leaving the larger limbs and often 

 parts of the trunks themselves, with all the 

 remaining trees of inferior size or less accessi- 

 ble, to decay or to be burned. As the result, 

 we have hardly anywhere, unless it be in the 

 Pacific region of the extreme Northwest, and 

 in some portions of the Southern States, a 

 remnant of the grand forests which once al- 

 most covered the land, while we have prac- 

 tically destroyed that magnificent belt of pines 

 which stretched from Maine to the Mississippi. 



Noah Webster, writing at the close of last 

 century, on the supposed change in the tem- 

 perature of winter, after examining many au- 

 thorities, ancient and modern, advances the 

 opinion that "the weather in modern winters 

 is more inconstant than when the earth was 

 covered with wood, at the first settlement of 

 Europeans in the country; that the warm 

 weather of autumn extends further into the 

 winter months, and the cold weather of win- 

 ter and spring encroaches upon the summer ; 

 that the wind being more variable, snow is 

 less permanent, and perhaps the same remark 

 may be applicable to the ice of the rivers." 

 He attributes these changes to the exposure of 

 the ground in consequence of clearings, and 

 the greater depth to which the earth freezes 

 in winters. 



Dr. Rush, at about the same period, ex- 

 presses the opinion that the springs were cold- 

 er and the autumns milder than formerly, the 

 rivers breaking up earlier in spring and freez- 

 ing later. 



Thomas Jefferson, distinguished for his habit 

 of observation, says that the snows were nei- 

 ther so late nor so frequent as formerly, and 

 intimates that the summers were longer, the 

 autumns later, and the winters shorter and 

 lighter than in former years. These changes, 

 which were observed to follow the clearing of 

 lands, were not gradual and slow, but quick 

 and sudden, in proportion to the extent of 

 cultivation. 



Volney, the French traveler, who visited 

 our country toward the close of last century, 

 notes the fact that changes had been observed 

 in the climate in proportion as the lauds had 

 been cleared. Kalm, also, who traveled in 

 America in 1849, notices a supposed similar 

 change of climate. 



But the opinions of a few individuals, how- 

 ever worthy of consideration, were not calcu- 

 lated to make any marked impression upon the 

 country, or to lead to any practical result. 



In Europe the importance of the forests has 

 long been recognized. As they were held for 

 the most part as the property of kings and 

 nobles, or of great ecclesiastical and municipal 

 corporations, the mass of the people had only 

 certain rights in them, or servitudes as they 

 were called, such as that of gathering fire- 

 wood, or leaves for bedding, or of pasturing 

 cattle and swine in them at certain seasons. 

 These rights were liable to constant abuse. 

 The peasantry would cut trees for fuel with- 

 out permission, or they would cut them for 

 the purpose of enlarging the pasturage. In 

 these and other ways the forests were preyed 

 upon and destroyed. But they were often 

 destroyed as the result of the frequent wars. 

 They would be cut down or burned as the 

 means of driving out an enemy concealed in 

 them, or as a means of annoyance or reprisal. 

 Sometimes kings and nobles, and even states, 

 when in need of money, would sell their for- 

 ests or portions of them. 



It should be borne in mind, however, that 

 in old English law and in the usage of olden 

 times the word " forest " had a different sig- 

 nification from what it has with us. A forest 

 was a hunting-ground. It might have trees, 

 or it might not. If it had, it was only inci- 

 dentally, as affording shelter and rest for the 

 game. Man wood, in his "Forest Laws," pub- 

 lished about three hundred years ago, makes 

 the essential characteristic of a forest that it 

 is set apart for the conservation of game, and 

 that if it have no game it can not be called a 

 forest. It must also belong to a sovereign. A 

 forest is a royal hunting-ground, and if the 

 king makes a grant of a forest to a subject, it 

 thereupon ceases to be a forest and becomes 

 what is known as a " chase." Blackstone de- 

 fines a forest thus : " Forests are waste grounds 

 belonging to the king, replenished with all man- 

 ner of chase or venery, which are under the 

 king's protection for the sake of his recreation 

 and delight." 



Blount says that when William the Con- 

 queror created what has ever since been 

 known as the New Forest, for his recreation, 

 as he was very fond of hunting, it " was raised 

 by the destruction of twenty - two parish 

 churches, and many villages and chapels and 

 manors, for the space of thirty miles together." 

 Only a small part of this extensive tract was 

 covered with trees so as to be a forest in our 

 modern understanding of the word. 



At length it was seen that there must be a 



