GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF NEW JERSEY. 



HISTORICAL NOTES ON FORESTS. 



New Jersey as one of the Middle Atlantic vStates was originally 

 well wooded and well watered, and the early settlers within its 

 bounds had to make their clearings on the border of the great 

 continental forests of North America. A pamphlet piiblished in 

 1648, entitled "A Description of the Province of New Albion," 

 &c., tells of the richness of the soil "replenished with the good- 

 liest woods of oak, and all timber for ships and masts, mulber- 

 ries, sweet cypresse, cedars, pines and firres."* Thomas Budd, 

 in his quaint story of "Good Order Established in Pennsilvania 

 and New Jersey in America," printed in 1685, says : " The Pine- 

 Tree groweth here, out of which is made Pitchy Tar, Rosin and 

 TurpentineP^ Gabriel Thomas in his "West-New Jersey," print- 

 ed in 1698, says : " In this country also is great plenty of working 

 Timber, as Oaks, Ash, Chestnuts, Pine, Cedar, Walnut, Poplar, 

 Firr, and Masts for Ships, with Pitch and Rosin of great use and 

 much benefit to the Country."^ In a further account of the 

 many navigable rivers, he says of " Timber-River alias Glocester- 

 River, which hath its name (also) from the great quantity of 

 curious Timber, which they send in great Eloafs to Philadelphia, 

 a City in Pennsilvania, as Oaks, Pines, Chestnuts, Ash and Ce- 

 dars."^ The following extract is from the Travels of Johann 

 David Sch'pf in the middle and southern United States of North 

 America, in 1777, published at Erlangen, Germany, in 1788. || 

 " The mining and metallurgical industry in New Jersey, as every- 

 where in America, cannot be enduring in its present condition 

 because no care is taken, as is done in most districts in Europe, 

 to maintain the forests, and many works must stop without imin- 

 terrupted supplies of coal and timber, as is here and there already 

 the case. There is not the slightest care of the forests. The 

 owners of forges and furnaces have generally large tracts of 

 woodland, which are cut over without order. * * * l^l^e 



* Smith's Hist, of New Jersey, Burlington, 1765, ^p. 27-28. 

 f Reprint in Gowan's Bibliotheca Americana, No. 4, p. 35. 



J An Historical and Geographical Account of the Province and Country of Pennsilvania and West- 

 New- Jersey, London — 1698, p. 27. 



g Gabriel Thomas, page 28. ^ 



II Reise durch einige der mittleren und sudlichen Vereinigten Nordamerilcanischen Staaten, Erlangen, 

 1788, Vol. i, p 43. 



