70 INSECURITY OF OUE FORESTS. 



explained to them by some one who has made it his 

 special study; but reading does not acc[uaint a person 

 with facts contained only in books which he never 

 reads, though his habit of reading only for amusement 

 may keep him ignorant of many things which he would 

 otherwise learn from observation. The subject of this 

 essay is not sufficiently exciting to obtain a hearing from 

 the public in a lecture-room. Every avenue of popular 

 information is so greatly obstructed by objects designed 

 only to afford amusement, that science and philosophy, 

 save those branches which some eloquent work has ren- 

 dered fashionable, have but very little chance to be heard. 

 Even among our literary classes, if you speak of trees and 

 woods, there is only an occasional individual of eccentric 

 habits who seems capable of taking any other than an 

 aesthetic view of their relations to human wants. 



But it will be said, if a liberal education does not sup- 

 ply men with the right kind of knowledge on this point, 

 certainly our practical inen will understand it. They, 

 I admit, would see at once how much money could be 

 made by cutting down aU the trees in any given tract of 

 forest ; but they are not the men to be consulted respect- 

 ing the advantage of any scheme that does not promise 

 to be a profitable investment of capital. Our practical 

 men are the very individuals from whose venal hands 

 it is necessary to protect our forests by legislation. In 

 France, where ■ great evils have followed the destruction 

 of woods, laws have been enacted for restoring and pre- 

 serving them in certain situations. These laws, how- 

 ever, originated, not with practical men, but with Napo- 

 leon III., who obtained his views from men of science. 

 Oui; people have less knowledge of this subject than the 

 Europeans, who have been compelled to study it by the 

 presence of evils which the Americans are just beginning 

 to experience. 



