36 MODERN FOREST ECONOMY. 



forest first becoming a fruitful field, then partially, but to a 

 great extent, the site of industrial establishments, and the 

 site of cities, and the dwelling-place of a population advan- 

 cing in civilisation, and in intellect, and in culture, with 

 results which are now to be seen. 



Such is one view of what has occurred, but there is yet 

 another. 



The forest was the paradise of the ' wild man of the 

 woods.' It was his Eden, his garden of delights ; but ere 

 he left it he began to destroy it, and his descendants, his 

 improved descendants, have carried on the work of 

 destruction initiated by him, and they have substituted 

 for the paradise of Eden the paradise — I had almost said 

 the 'fool's paradise' — of modern life in the capitals and 

 pleasure haunts of what is called advanced civilisation. 

 The advancement is great, but the cost has been consider- 

 able. Forests, or trees of which forests are composed, are 

 still useful in the world's economy. The supply, though 

 great, was not inexhaustible. Destruction has in many 

 places been carried so far that privation has proved hurt- 

 ful in its effects. And now there must be a judicious 

 conservation and exploitation of what remains ; aye, and in 

 some places man must restore again what he had taken 

 away, or the consequences may be fatal. 



What seems to me to be an apt illustration of what 

 has been going on suggests itself In the animal ecomony 

 there may be seen and traced in the life history of every 

 man who lives to extreme old age, a process which is 

 similiar to what has occurred in the history of the ancient 

 forests of Europe : in the infant, in the child, in the youth, 

 in the man in the prime of life, the man in middle life, 

 and in the man in old age, there is going on simultaneously 

 a correlative process of growth and decay, of nourishment 

 and waste, of assimilation and elimination. Many among 

 us have been eating for twenty, for fifty, it may be, for 

 eighty years. What has become of all the material we 

 have eaten in all these years ? Whereas we might by this 



