268 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVII. No. 424. 



The appearance of this book is timely, 

 though after many years of forestry propa- 

 ganda in which its author has taken a prom- 

 inent part, it may be doubted whether the aver- 

 age student, to say nothing of the layman, is 

 yet fully prepared to appreciate the important 

 principles and conclusions herein enunciated. 

 It is written with characteristic clearness and 

 directness by our greatest authority on the 

 subject, and contains much of vital interest 

 at this stage of forestry development in the 

 United States. This review is an attempt to 

 bring out some of its more salient features, 

 in part in the author's own words. Limits 

 of space unfortunately necessitate great con- 

 densation and omission of much that is well 

 worthy of careful consideration. 



In his discussion of the relation of the state 

 to natural resources the author considers the 

 principle, recognized in all civilized states, of 

 the necessity of protection of the rights of the 

 many from the unrestricted exercise of indi- 

 vidual interests, and extends the principle to 

 its widest interpretation by including the 

 rights of the future many. The activity of the 

 state has for its object the perpetuity of the 

 well-being of society, its continued welfare and 

 improvement; it must provide for the future, 

 must be providential, hence the economy of 

 resources, much neglected in economic litera- 

 ture, fully justifies the large place accorded 

 to its discussion. " While we are debating 

 over the best methods of disposing of our 

 wealth, we gradually lose our very capital 

 without even realizing the fact. ' Whether we 

 have a high tariff or no tariff, an income tax 

 or head tax, direct or indirect taxation, bi- 

 metallism or a single standard, are matters 

 which concern, to be sure, the temporary con- 

 venience of the members of society, but this 

 prejudicial adjustment is easily remediable. 

 But whether fertile lands are turned into des- 

 erts, forests into waste places, brooks into tor- 

 rents, rivers changed from means of power and 

 intercourse into means of destruction and deso- 

 lation — these are questions which concern the 

 material existence itself of society; and since 

 such changes become often irreversible, the 

 damage irremediable, and at the same time the 

 extent of available resources becomes smaller 



in proportion to population, their considera- 

 tion is finally much more important than those 

 other questions of the day." 



Considering the forest as a resource, it is 

 shown that wood supplies are, and unquestion- 

 ably will continue to be, an indispensable re- 

 quirement of our civilization, almost like 

 water, air and food. In the appendix sta- 

 tistics are cited which show that all the in- 

 dustrial nations have, during the last forty 

 to fifty years, increased their per capita con- 

 sumption of wood materials greatly, in spite 

 of the increase in the use of substitutes. The 

 money value resulting from the mere conver- 

 sion of the products of our woodlands equals at 

 present annually a two per cent, dividend on the 

 entire wealth of the nation, yet, owing largely 

 to wasteful methods, hardly more than twenty 

 to thirty per cent, of the material in the felled 

 trees is utilized, and by the process of culling 

 the valuable kinds the lumberman gives the 

 advantage to the weeds in tree growth, with 

 no reference whatever to future supplies. In 

 Germany, on the other hand, the forest re- 

 source represents, in round numbers, a capital 

 value of $180 per acre, paying a constant 

 revenue of three per cent, on this capitaliza- 

 tion, producing a constant annual gross rev- 

 enue of $190,000,000, and this, too, from soils 

 that, for the most part, would otherwise be 

 unproductive. If is apparent that we are 

 bound to exhaust our own stores in less time 

 than they can be replaced, and that we are 

 living not on interest merely, but are rapidly 

 attacking our wood capital. Our per capita 

 consumption is nearly nine times that of Ger- 

 many, and twenty-five times that of England, 

 a fact that suggests the possibility of a far 

 more economical use of our timber resources. 

 Under the business aspects of forest produc- 

 tion certain striking facts are presented. 

 Thus it is stated that Saxony has taken in 

 about $200,000,000 during the last fifty years 

 from a small area of rough mountain land, not 

 half a million acres, a tract half the size of 

 many a county in the United States, and that 

 without diminishing, but rather increasing, 

 its earning power. In Prussia the average 

 price of wood per cubic foot nearly doubled in 

 the thirty-five years from 1830 to 1865, and 



