362 Traxsactions of the American Institute. 



attention of economists and statesmen. Acting in ignorance of the 

 existing facts, there is no protection, in price or otherwise, and lum- 

 ber is improvidently employed instead of stone or brick, until abso- 

 lute want must inevitably result. We do not venture to suggest a 

 complete remedy, but the first step is to become acquainted with the 

 subject ; then, as the scarcity increases, prices will advance, and 

 tracts be reserved for future use. Brick, stone, iron, and their 

 improvements, tubular and malleable iron, steel, and even artificial 

 stone, cements, and newer developments of science, will be adopted ; 

 young forests will then be protected, and even new ones planted for 

 the wants of the distant future. 



Dr. J. V. C. Smith wa<Rted to know how they could expect civiliza- 

 tion unless they cleared away the forests. As to the loss of fertility 

 spoken of in the Holy Land, he would say that there was no country 

 in the world so productive as Palestine at the present day. He had 

 been there, and he believed that the parable of our Savior was every- 

 thing but poetry ; the one which refers to the sower going out to sow 

 his seed, and those seeds which fell upon good soil bringing forth a 

 hundred fold ; for he himself had seen the birds following the sower 

 in numbers sufiicient to eat every grain of seed up almost, and yet 

 the crop turned out immense. In that country the barley and wheat 

 crops were unprecedented, and so with other grains. 



Mr. J. B. Lyman said that it was difficult to prevent a man buy- 

 ing what he liked to build his house of, but it certainly would be 

 desirable that builders should not use the white pine of the coun- 

 try for their " big " timbers. Those timbers four by eight and four 

 by three are mostly of white pine because it is convenient and light 

 and because men like to work it, but for this " big " or " range " tim- 

 ber, twenty woods were just as good, and what he wanted to suggest 

 was that men use maple, hemlock, chestnut, and the common kinds 

 of oak and poplar instead of so precious and so rapidly decreasing a 



substance as white pine. 



Adjourned. 



June 8, 1869. 



Nathan C. Ely, Esq., in the cliair; Mr. John W. Chambers, Secretary. 

 Horsfokd's Yeast Powders. 

 Mr. J. H. Tompkins, Grand Rapids, Michigan. — Professor Horsford 

 of Cambridge, Mass., has invented a combination of an acid and an 



