TREES AND TREES. 105 
This country has been favored above all others in the 
natural variety and abundance of useful and ornamental 
trees, and had farmers and lumbermen shown due wis- 
dom and foresight in their treatment of the forests, 
using only such timber as their necessities required, and 
clearing such portions as were needed for tillage, leav- 
ing larger and more frequent areas uncut, especially on 
steep hillsides, along all water courses, shores of lakes, 
banks of rivers, smaller streams, and along all highways, 
the enjoyment of magnificent landscapes, of shade and 
shelter from winds, would have been cause for future 
generations to bless the memory of their ancestors. 
Instead, this generosity of nature has been met by 
man’s most lavish and destructive spirit. A ceaseless 
war has been waged on our pine forests, more destruc- 
tive than that upon the Indians. Not only have the 
trees been used for proper purposes, but the speculating 
lumbermen have swept over millions of acres, denuding 
them of their priceless products, and oftentimes ruining 
themselves at the same time they despoiled God’s fair 
country. The valuable groves of black walnut have 
nearly all been felled, and their huge trunks cut into logs 
and hurried to the jaws of the mills, as though their 
presence were hateful in the sight of their owners. 
Hardly a tree of the beautiful black cherry remains in 
the Eastern States. The bass-wood and white-wood are 
rapidly following. The red beech, chestnut and white 
ash have been split into rails or burned as fuel. The 
cedars have been made into pails and fence posts, until 
