27 



President's Address: 



Deforestation and Its Effects Among the Hills of 

 Southern Indiana. 



By Glenn Culbertson. 



No region of America, east of the Rocky Mountains, was in the past 

 more densely wooded than were the hills and valleys of southern Indiana. 

 Some of the most magnificent specimens of the temperate latitude forest 

 trees found a suitable habitat along the crests of the divides, and upon 

 the valley slopes of the Ohio River and its tributaries. Very few un- 

 wooded areas were found a'mong the hills of southern Indiana, and such 

 as were present were not large. 



The "flats'' or "slash" lands, forming the watersheds between the Ohio 

 and the Wabash and their tributaries in many parts of southeastern In- 

 diana, were occupied largely by the sweet gum, or liquidamber, the black 

 gum, beech, shell-bark hickory, black-jack and red oaks, red maple and 

 hackberry. 



On the gently-rolling land and among the hills the yellow poplar, white 

 and chinquapin oaks, the black walnut, sugar maple, beech, hickory, buck- 

 eye, black locust, linn or basswood, the white and blue ash, and on the 

 still more precipitous and rocky ridges the chestnut oak and cedar, were 

 found. 



In the rich alluvial bottoms, and along the streams, in addition to 

 many of the rolling land trees, were present in their greatest luxuriance 

 the elm, the cottonwood and the sycamore. Many of these trees were 

 among the giants in dimensions. There were yellow poplars from one hun- 

 dred to one hundred and twenty-five feet in height, and from twenty 

 to twenty-five or more feet in circumference. Sycamores grew along the 

 larger streams and in the river bottoms, of such dimensions that their 

 hollow trunks were sometimes used as rude dwellings and as stables. 



White oaks and black walnuts grew to such size and in such profusion 

 that were they to be had now, in their original numbers, their value would 

 be twenty-fold greater than the present value of the land from which they 

 were cut. 



