FORESTRY BUREAU. 



157 



A recent number of the Timber Trades Journal, London, England, 

 says : 



We have already had occasion to speak of the peculiarity that while our imports 

 generally are decreasing in sympathy with the contraction of trade, the influx of 

 timber goods knows no intermission. On the contrary, it is enlarging on a scale that 

 would be compatible only with something more than an average demand, but is not 

 easily reconciled with an admitted curtailment of business and the small prospect of 

 turning it over at a fair market price. 



A later issue of the same journal says : 



If it were not for the large public works in progress there would be next door to 

 nothing doing to carry off the large surplus stocks that are continually accumulating. 

 It is the same cry everywhere, business slack and trade seemingly at a standstill. If 

 you speak to anyone about buying they will hardly stop to inquire the particulars 

 of the goods you are offering, and even though the arrivals are slackening, it will take 

 a long time before the benefit of the diminished supplies will bo felt. 



Freights are still low, the ship-owners, as represented by their captains, being ap- 

 parently at the mercy of those few importers who are still in the market for tonnage. 



Again it says : 



Several of the sailing ships usually engagedin the carrying of wood goods from the 

 Bothnian Gulf are preparing to lie up, the approaching autumn, premiums for insur- 

 ance giving their owners no hope whatever of making ends meet in the present state 

 of the freight market. 



In a measure the same causes which have led to the rapid consump- 

 tion of our forests have occasioned a like destruction of the Scandina- 

 vian woods, and anxiety has arisen in Norway and Sweden on this ac- 

 count, and the Government of those countries has been urged to adopt 

 measures calculated to prevent the disastrous consequences which are 

 threatened. 



REPEATING HISTORY OF OTHER NATIONS. 



We are only repeating in this country, in respect to the forests, what 

 has everywhere occurred since the earliest historic periods. Only when 

 the forests have been consumed have men learned their real value and 

 the office which they were designed to fill in the grand economy of na- 

 ture. As mankind have migrated from the original home of the race, in 

 whatever direction they have gone, their course has been marked by 

 the destruction of the forests. Sometimes these have been destroyed 

 in order to clear the ground for agricultural use, sometimes as a meas- 

 ure of defense or offense in war, sometimes with the simple desire of 

 pecuniary gain, but always with a disregard of the ultimate conse- 

 quences. 



RESULTS OF REMOVAL OF FORESTS. 



It is only recently, indeed, that we have learned that the removal of 

 the forests involves anything more than the loss of the forests them- 

 selves. Their connection with climate, with the precipitation of moist- 

 * ure, with the flow of streams, with the atmospheric currents, with the 

 temperature of the atmosphere, and consequently with the great inter- 

 ests of civilized life, with agriculture and commerce, was not known — 

 was hardly suspected a little while ago. The forests were valued for 

 fuel, for the production of timber for constructive purposes, and for 

 certain uses in the arts, and as the supply for these purposes seemed 

 sufficient and more than sufficient, no restraint was placed upon their 

 consumption. But at length it has been discovered that the forests 

 have meteorological connections of the highest importance. It has 

 been discovered that their extensive removal is the occasion of droughts 

 and floods, of tornadoes and destructive torrents. The change in the 

 condition of many countries of the Old World, so that from once being 



