102 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



the State must do something as well as the General Government. 



It cost France thirty million dollars to correct the evils caused by 

 this neglect. Laws can be made and enforced to secure enough 

 woods or timber to maintain our present climatic influences, and thus 

 secure to agriculture that which the present greed of the landholders 

 is making little or no attempt to preserve. 



A number of years ago, the Legislature passed a law, now in 

 force, which lost the State many millions of growing forest trees 

 that stood on public grounds. The act reads : " Supervisors shall 

 cut down all bushes growing within any county or township high- 

 way, the same to be done within the months of July and August of 

 each year," under severe penalties for negligence or failure to per- 

 form the act. 



Thus a clean sweep was made of every tree and plant, as the 

 word "-bushes"' was legally and correctly defined to mean places 

 "abounding in trees or shrubs." Trees of all kinds and sizes bor- 

 dering the highways met their doom under this act. And every 

 growing scion that dared since to raise its head along the borders of 

 Ohio roads, has met a similar fate in the months of July and August 

 each year. 



If laws can be enforced to cut down trees along the public high- 

 ways, laws can be made and enforced to restore them. 



There are in the State approximately seventeen thousand six hun- 

 dred miles of county and township roads. A tree at the distance 

 of thirty feet on either side of these roads, would amount to over 

 six hundred million trees. Trees that could be owned, cultivated 

 and protected by law, and in the aggregate would form a forest 

 equal to one hundred and fifty thousand acres. 



At the same time a legal act of this kind would maintain the 

 lawful width of roads, and prevent encroachments by adjoining 

 land- owners, and make all our highways and byways avenues of 

 beauty, health and pleasure. A fraction of a mill added to the 

 tax assessment in each county as a forestry fund, and expended in 

 planting trees along the highways, would soon accomplish the work. 

 This, with trees similarly arranged along all the railroads, and a 

 law placing twelve or more around each school-house, and an act 

 preventing the cutting of "bushes' 1 ' or trees growing along canals 

 and rivers, and an exemption from taxation of lands devoted 

 exclusively to woods, would in the aggregate form an important 

 factor in preserving the true ratio of timber to farming lands, the 



