THE AMERICAN FORESTS 869 



and burn the timber from hundreds of square 

 miles ; not a man in the State would care to 

 spend an hour in fighting them, as long as his 

 own fences and buildings were not threatened. 



Notwithstanding all the waste and use which 

 have been going on unchecked like a storm for 

 more than two centuries, it is not yet too late — 

 though it is high time — for the government 

 to begin a rational administration of its for- 

 ests. About seventy million acres it still owns, 

 — enough for all the country, if wisely used. 

 These residual forests are generally on mountain 

 slopes, just where they are doing the most good, 

 and where their removal would be followed by 

 the greatest number of evils; the lands they 

 cover are too rocky and high for agriculture, and 

 can never be made as valuable for any other crop 

 as for the present crop of trees. It has been 

 shown over and over again that if these moun- 

 tains were to be stripped of their trees and 

 underbrush, and kept bare and sodless by hordes 

 of sheep and the innumerable fires the shepherds 

 set, besides those of the millmen, prospectors, 

 shake-makers, and all sorts of adventurers, both 

 lowlands and mountains would speedily become 

 little better than deserts, compared with their 

 present beneficent fertility. During heavy rain- 

 falls and while the winter accumulations of snow 

 were melting, the larger streams would swell into 

 destructive torrents, cutting deep, rugged-edged 



