PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 13 
lessening the force of the wind about the dwelling, and as a protection to 
orchards and fruits, equalizing the temperature to a large extent. 
Not only do the annual farm crops suffer from insufficient water almost 
every summer, but many fine Elms, Fir and Pine trees have died in’ the 
parks about our cities and in private grounds throughout the country, the only 
apparent cause being the succession of prolonged drouths, which have so low- 
ered their vitality as to induce disease. 
In those localities where lands are of increasing value and the wood lots 
are required for pasture, all young growths are destroyed by cattle. If not 
killed entirely by browsing, the symmetry is destroyed so that they can never 
make good trees; while seeds are, by tramping, prevented from growth. One 
by one the original trees fall, owing to the unnatural conditions to which they 
are subjected, and without young growths to take their places, the forests, like 
the Indians who inhabited them, seem destined to extermination. 
Along the lines of some of our railways in the mountain regions are high 
piles of Oak tan bark, awaiting shipment. Not infrequently are the trees left 
to decay, having only been felled for the bark, which has a commercial value, 
the trees being too far from saw mills to possess value. 
Young growths of hickory, chestnut, and other woods are cut for hoop 
poles, which in a very few years would be of immeasurably greater worth. 
The great forest regions of our North and Western States have frequent 
conflagrations in which vast areas are destroyed. Often on the mountain 
sides travel, impossible except on foot, is impeded by the blackened, bayonet- 
like trunks and limbs lying prostrate, fixed in every position. Young thickets 
still standing, all dead, black, dismal, without a dollar’s value, destroyed by 
some careless hunter’s camp-fire, or by sparks from a passing locomotive. 
The demands of the commercial world, the railways for ties, the telegraphs 
for poles, the manufactories for making furniture and the innumerable uses to 
which wood is applied, are rapidly consuming the timber which still remains in 
the less accessible territory, while no systematic effort is being made by cor- 
porations, nor by States, or the national Government, either for the preserva- 
tion of what forests are still growing and the renewal of those which are being 
cleared or for the planting of new forests on prairie lands. 
It is true, many States have done something towards the encouragement 
of forestry—and the national Government has made some efforts in encourag- 
ing this work, while many nurserymen and thoughtful farmers have planted 
groves and timber plantations which are worthy examples to follow—but no 
system has been evolved for the practical foresting of extensive tracts of the 
national domain. 
It is full time that the American people should consider these matters 
seriously and take such action as will aid in preserving to posterity a portion 
of the forests which are of so great importance to mankind. 
Masses of timber modify the wind, break their force, guide the air currents 
higher from the earth’s surface, and so ameliorate the climate. Sudden 
changes of temperature through great extremes are far less usual in regions 
covered with heavy timber than in treeless lands. Evaporation becomes very 
rapid where strong winds pass over the unprotected surface, causing the soil 
