FORESTRY COMMISSION. 59 



The dreams by tlie fireside, the scenes by the domestic hearth, ever rank 

 as synonyms of human felicity. The bright blaze of the wood fire, with 

 its pleasant heat, so condncive to cheerfulness and comfort; the flicker- 

 ing tire-light shining from the farm house window, the steady ascending 

 smoke from the chimney of the old homestead to cheer the husbandman 

 or Avayfarer on a winter's evening — all are inextricably interwoven in the 

 minds of our race as fundamentally essential to whatever is best and 

 most durable of the pleasure of life. Who of us who has passed the 

 meridian of life, and and whose early days were spent in the farm house 

 or ill the old-time country village home, does not vividly recall the great 

 wood fireplace and the associations that crowd upon the memory witli 

 its recollection? The foundation of many a notable New England family 

 was laid, in the early days, by sighing swains and timorous maidens while 

 sitting on the hearth by the ilickering firelight of the backlog, in the long 

 winter evenings. And while the old-time fireplace, while the backlogs 

 and ihe .ioyfiii custom of the hanging of the crane have faded away with 

 the disappearance of the material that sufficed for their existence, the 

 memory of all the sweet and enduring associations that cling around 

 them and throng upon the mind with their recollection can never be 

 eliminated from the minds of those who participated in them in their 

 youth. 



How prone are we to be disregardful of what is most conducive and 

 essential to our comfort and happiness! We are prodigal and wasteful 

 of That which is most necessary and which we should exercise the great- 

 est care to preserve and perpetuate. The old wood fireplace, with its 

 simple, healthful influence and life, must inevitably have disappeared 

 witli the cliange of conditions and can only continue to exist in some 

 modified form; but, alas, it was doomed, and much else that was truly 

 dear, through the wasteful destruction of that upon which it fed. 



Fire, air and water were the elements of the ancients; but while we 

 have learned to resoh'o them iuto their component parts, we cannot ab- 

 stract from them their primal importance as the supporters of life. 

 Nothing that lives can exist without tlieir aid; and while we may have 

 no concern as to the perpetual sufficiency of air and water, it has already 

 become a suitable question of consideration — what of the future of fuel? 

 Tlie forests have disappeared, or are disappearing, and the coal fields 

 that are known are drawn upon to an extent that foreshadows their ulti- 

 mate exhaustion. And, too, as the supply of fuel becomes lessened and 

 more stringent, human greed and rapacity enter in and render the matter 

 of obtaining it more difficult; and the matter of supporting one's fires, 

 even now extremely burdensome, is, seemingly, sure of becoming more 

 and more onerous as the years advance, unless measures are immediately 

 attempted and successfully carried out to ameliorate the baleful condi- 

 tions that have sprung up and which cast their portentous shadows into 

 the future. Fuel is a primal necessity to every human being; and as the 

 forests which once gave us supply have been cut away, the reliance has 

 been coal. While trees are and may be universally found, coal, on the 

 contrary, is limited to localities and restricted areas; and the lands in 

 which it exists may be and are owned by individuals, and the production 

 is controlled by these owners. And, unfortunately, too, the railroads 

 which transport the jiroducts of these coal mines are to a. great extent 

 owned or controlled by the pi'oducers of the coal. So, thus it is, that 



