January 30, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



57 



The Forest. 



The Forests and Woodlands of New Jersey. — III. 



Treatment of Hill-slopes. — Some broad, beautiful slopes 

 and hill-sides on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River 

 have been irretrievably ruined by most unintelligent man- 

 agement. They were originally covered with a heavy growth 

 of trees, and were thus protected from destructive washing 

 and land-slides. There was an obvious and imperative neces- 

 sity that such land should be left permanently under forest 

 conditions. This could easily have been done without restrict- 

 ing in the slightest degree its productiveness. All the timber 

 that it would yield could have been cut off when the crop 

 would best meet the demands of the market, without any in- 

 terference with the conditions required for the perpetual 

 reproduction of the forest. It was only necessary to protect 

 these steep tracts from fire and from pasturage. The ruin of 

 such slopes is caused more frequently by pasturing them than 

 m any other way. The woods are thus finally killed out, and 

 then the soil begins to wash away where the strongest cun"ents 

 of water descend. Small gullies are found at first; and as the 

 strong, elastic network of living roots decays, huge slices of 

 the surface of the hill-side begin to slip down, and there is 

 soon an unsightly mound at the foot of the slope, where the 

 soil of broad and fertile acres has been deposited, or it has all 

 gone into the river below. 



Some such declivities are destroyed by the attempt to culti- 

 vate them, but this is idiotic and suicidal. When land is so 

 steep that it must inevitably wash away and be destroyed 

 whenever the forest is removed, the collective intelligence of 

 the community should interfere if the individual owner is in- 

 capable of taking care of his own possessions. In many 

 instances the injury to such hill-slopes, once started, extends 

 to other farms, and destroys lands that were in their own con- 

 ditions protected and safe. 



Because such destruction of fertile and valuable land goes 

 on in detail, a little here and a little there, nobody thinks about 

 it. But along every considerable river flowing through a hill- 

 country the permanent damage and loss of value amounts to 

 hundreds of thousands of dollars. If the land thus destroyed 

 along the whole length of the stream were carried out from 

 one place it would make a great sensation. People would 

 think about it, and something might be done to prevent it. In 

 every region of steep, rolling land or hill-slopes, where the soil 

 has any considerable fertility, the same process of destruction 

 is constantly going on, and the owners of the land accept such 

 ruin as if it were wrought by the direct act of God, or the re- 

 sistless processes of nature, whereas it is caused solely by their 

 own lack of intelligence. It is entirely unnecessary, and a very 

 slight exercise of thought and judgment would suffice to 

 prevent it. 



Profits from Woodland. — The profit from woodland is 

 varied greatly by different conditiohs, such as distance from 

 market, facility of transportation, the relation of supply to de- 

 mand, and other causes. In some parts of the state, as in 

 Salem County, many owners think their woodlands yield no 

 profit whatever. Some of them say that they keep their lands 

 in forest only because fhe wood would not pay the cost of cut- 

 ting it off. Others say there is no profit or benefit beyond the 

 mere convenience of being able to go out and cut a sill or post 

 when they want one ; and some say that they preserve their 

 woods for considerations of sentiment alone — that they like to 

 see the trees, and to walk among them sometimes. 



Estimates of the amount of profit from forest-lands vary, 

 from nothing, as above, to ten per cent, of their value or of 

 the whole sum invested. In some regions, where the soil is 

 good and the growth of timber is consequently rapid, and 

 where some local industry supplies a brisk market near at 

 hand, some owners think their woodlands yield a profit of ten 

 per cent. In other parts of the state, where all the conditions 

 are less favorable, profits are estimated at one, two, three, four, 

 five and six percent. But the truth appears to be that there is 

 very little accurate knowledge on the subject. I have found 

 the widest possible differences between the estimates of men 

 living in the same neighborhood, and even in regard to the 

 same tract of woodland ; some intelligent and experienced 

 woodsmen affirming that it was worth six per cent., while 

 others said of the same land that it would not be worth having 

 as a source of income, even as a gift, and that woodland is an 

 undesirable kind of property. 



Very few, if any, owners have kept such accounts of the 

 yield of the various products of their woodlands as would be 

 necessary for the determination of the question of the amount 

 of profit. The amounts named above are estimated only. It 



would of course be of great service to the country if a few 

 owners would keep accurate records of all cost and expendi- 

 tures, on the one hand, for certain definite measured areas of 

 forest, and, on the other, a complete account of all receipts of 

 every kind. This would have to be continued at least through 

 the whole term of the life of one generation of trees — that is, 

 from the time when one gi"owth of the timber is cut off until 

 the next growth reaches maturity, and is, in its turn, all cut off 

 and marketed. Such a record would have great interest and 

 value as a contribution to our knowledge of economic forestry. 

 Who will begin and continue it ? 



Forest-Fires. — Forest-fires are the greatest cause of injury 

 to the forests and woodlands of New Jersey. In all parts of 

 the state where there are large tracts of woodland the value of 

 this kind of property as an investment has been seriously di- 

 minished by the liability to great damage or almost complete 

 destruction of the woods by fires. Each successive burning 

 of a forest impoverishes the soil more and more, and its ca- 

 pacity for reproducing a valuable growth of timber is thus 

 gradually diminished, and in time almost completely destroyed. 

 If any plan could be devised for the effectual protection of the 

 woodlands of the state from fire their value would at once be 

 greatly increased. The question how to defend the forests 

 from fire is in this state, as in some other parts of our 

 country, the most urgent of all our forestry problems. It 

 does not seem likely that we shall obtain much help from 

 legislation. 



A considerable proportion of the most destructive fires are 

 started by sparks from railway locomotives. There are sev- 

 eral kinds of spark-arresting appliances which would, in part 

 at least, prevent the escape of burning cinders from the 

 engines, but the railroad people object to their use on the 

 ground that they lessen the speed of their trains. Some of 

 the railroad companies keep the whole breadth of their 

 "right of way "clear of trees and bushes, and plow a nar- 

 row strip at the edge of it, on each side. This is a valuable 

 precaution, and doubtless prevents many fires. But a high 

 wind sometimes carries sparks beyond this barrier into the 

 dry woods, and thousands of acres are burned over before 

 the fire runs its course. In such cases it would be a good 

 plan for the owners of forest-lands on each side of the rail- 

 road to clear a narrow zone all along the front of their prop- 

 erty, and plow it every year, so as to prevent the possibility, 

 under ordinary conditions, of fire being blown into the woods 

 from passing engines. 



This suggests the only means for preventing the unlimited 

 or indefinite extension of forest-fires which would be at once 

 practicable and effective. This is the plan of clearing and 

 plowing narrow lanes through all large bodies of forest, at 

 regular distances apart, at every mile, for instance, crossing 

 each other at right angles, thus dividing the woodlands into 

 protected blocks, each a square mile in area. The wood thus 

 cut out, when not too remote from market, would probably 

 pay the cost of the work of clearing these lanes at first ; but 

 where this is not the case, the expenditure would be returned 

 many times over in the rapid increase in value of the wood- 

 lands of the state which would result from their comparative 

 security from the ravages of fire. It is often observed that an 

 old woods-road, having only the breadth of a single wagon- 

 track, is sufficient to stop the progress of a forest-fire, and it is 

 altogether probable that a lane, forty or fifty feet wide, kept 

 clear of trees and bushes, and with one-half of its breadth 

 plowed every year, would nearly always be found an effec- 

 tive barrier. If this should prove to be true in practice, then 

 a system of such lanes, crossing the woods in opposite di- 

 rections a mile apart, would have the effect of confining each 

 particular fire within the limits of the square mile on which it 

 is started, and the damage in each case would be compara- 

 tively slight. The proper breadth for such lanes, and their 

 number, would be determined by practical experiment, as 

 their value would be demonstrated by use. 



The greatest obstacle in the way of the adoption of such a 

 plan for forest protection is probably a certain indisposition on 

 the part of the owners of woodlands to do new and untried 

 things, a kind of inertia which is common to all classes and 

 conditions of men. If some energetic owner of a large tract 

 of woodland would put this plan into operation, his example 

 would probably soon be imitated by others. It would be com- 

 paratively easy of application in the level regions of southern 

 New Jersey, but its use would be more difficult in the moun- 

 tains and highlands of the northern part of the state. Until 

 some such practical method is adopted the progressive de- 

 vastation and ruin of the forests in this state by fire will proba- 

 bly proceed unchecked. 



Franklin Falls, N. H. J. B. Harrison. 



