500 Transactions of the American Institute. 



and valuable forests; and these, too, on land that is comparatively 

 worthless for other purposes. 



Instances are not wanting to prove that thousands of acres of 

 valuable timber are annually destroyed by men who have no use 

 for the land after the trees are removed; at least they possessed 

 more acres, that are already cleared, than they could properl}- cul- 

 tivate. I do not now refer to the cutting of timber that is required 

 for building or fuel, but to the many instances M'here the sole 

 object of its destruction Avas for the purpose of allowing the pro- 

 prietor to obtain a slightly lengthened view from his dwelling, or, 

 that which is more probable, pampering to that foolish weakness, 

 which is far too general among land-owners, of having it said that 

 he possesses a few more acres of land. The first act of a settler in 

 a timbered country is to clear away the forest so that he may have 

 land to cultivate and produce the necessaries of life. But he does 

 not stop when he has accomplished this, but continues to cut and 

 hew away at the forests, as though it was the only object of his 

 life; and, as each monarch of the old woods falls to the earth, 

 making it tremble with its weight, he imagines that the echoes 

 which come back to him are so many plaudits to his industry. 



With many of our people, destruction is synonymous with 

 improvement. And there is no doubt but that the destroying of 

 forests in our Eastern States has become a matter of habit with 

 our people. The grandfathers, and, in a few instances, the fathers, 

 of the present race of farmers, cleared land because it was actually 

 needed for cultivation; and as each successive generation imagined 

 that it was incumbent upon them to make further improvements, 

 they readily followed in the beaten path made by their ancestors, 

 forgetting that an act which might show great wisdom at one time, 

 would be foolish imbecility at another. The young man builds his 

 dwelling upon elevated ground, and probably clears away the trees 

 because they obstruct his view, luid he values prosj)ect more than 

 jproteclion; but later in life he will sigh for a few of those grand 

 old trees to shield him from the burning sun of summer and the 

 keen blast of winter. 



Is it not passing strange, that a majority of mankind find no 

 useful lesson in the history of the past, but continue to travel in 

 the channel which has been worn wide and deep by previous gen- 

 erations, in their downward course to destruction? Entire coun- 

 tries have become barren wastes in consequence of the destruction 

 of their forests; nations have become impoverished, and those 



