REPORT ON FORESTS. 253 
sherds, broken shells, bones and bits of jasper. At certain times 
of the year large numbers crossed the State to enjoy for a time 
the bathing and fruits of the sea, but the permanent population 
was never large. The Indian of New Jersey domesticated no 
animals and cultivated only a few plants. His clumsy stone 
implements were so unwieldy and impotent that he was unable 
to exterminate animals or cut down forests.* He depended 
mainly upon the fruits and animals of the woods. He needed 
only wood for fuel, which was everywhere plentiful, and white- 
cedar logs, out of which to shape his canoes. ‘The rivers were 
his highways, the canoe his conveyance. Fires, no doubt, were 
set both accidentally and purposely by the Indian, but in South- 
ern New Jersey they were probably infrequent, and did compar- 
atively little damage. Indians in parts of Western America still 
fire the bush} to facilitate hunting. They desire open prairies 
and intervales for their game. In many places east of the Missis- 
sippi river, after the Indians departed, prairie fires which they 
had purposely set every year, became less frequent, and forest 
vegetation in consequence began to appear in the open land. 
He has left his impress upon the country however, and Indian 
words are indelibly attached to many localities, and to the names 
of many plants and animals, such as persimmon, chinkapin, hick- 
ory, tamarack, mahogany; pecan, etc. 
Although the Algonquin Indian of New Jersey was dependent 
upon the forest and still in a primitive state, he cultivated small 
patches of maize and perhaps other vegetables, and was familiar 
with the edible wild plants. From the Indian the whites learned 
of a tree (Acer saccharum) with a sweet palatable sapt that grew 
*‘* The chief use of the hatchets among the Delaware Indians of New Jersey,’’ says Kalm, “‘ was to 
make good fields for maize plantations. If the ground was covered with woods, they cut off the bark all 
round the trees with their hatchets at a time when they lose theirsap. The trees thus girdled died, and 
the ground was a little turned up with crooked or sharp branches.’’ 
+The term “bush” is a peculiar one. It usually means a single low woody plant. In certain 
regions, however, it is applied to a wild forest with a dense underbrush. The sugar maple forest or 
orchard is sometimes called the ‘‘ sugar-bush.’’ The word in Dutch is “ bosch,’’ and means forest, and, 
no doubt, the Hollanders were the first to apply it in this sense in South Africa and America. The word 
“bois ’’ in French and ‘‘ bosco”’ in Italian are probably modifications of the same word. There is an old 
English word “ boscage,’’ which means a thicket or woodland growth. In old English law boscage 
meant food for cattle derived from trees or bushes, also a tax on wood brought into a city. 
{Col. Wm. Fox, in his paper on the maple-sugar industry, in the latest report of the New York State 
Forest Game and Fisheries Commission, says: ‘‘ For our first knowledge of this product we are 
indebted to the North American Indian, the same people who gave us corn and tobacco. From the 
records of the earliest explorers on this continent it appears that the Indians tapped the maples, gathered 
the sap in rude receptacles, and boiled it. The first white settlers used the same methods, which substan- 
tially remain unchanged to day.” 
