386 The National Geographic Magazine 



ized in 1898, and following its reorgani- 

 zation in 1902 a new and excellent forest 

 law was passed in 1904. The Philip- 

 pine forest service costs but half as 

 much as the revenue received from the 

 forests of the islands. 



The island of Porto Rico contains a 

 national forest reserve, the site of which 

 was once covered with valuable hard- 

 woods ; but this forest has been much 

 abused. Porto Rico, like the Philip- 

 pines, has many kinds of wood valuable 

 for cabinet-making. 



THE SETTLER AND THE FOREST 



When the early settlers from the Old 

 World landed on the Atlantic coast of 

 North America they brought with them 

 traditions of respect for the forest cre- 

 ated by generations of forest protection 

 at home. The country to which they 

 came was covered, for the most part, 

 with dense forests. There was so little 

 open land that ground had to be cleared 

 for the plow. It is true that the forest 

 gave the pioneers shelter and fuel and 

 game for food, but it was often filled 

 with hostile Indians ; it hemmed them 

 in on every side, and immense labor was 

 required to win from it the soil in which 

 to raise their necessary crops. Natu- 

 rally, it seemed to them an enemy 

 rather than a friend. Their respect for 

 it dwindled and disappeared, and its 

 place was taken by hate and fear. 



The feeling of hostility to the forest 

 which grew up among the early settlers 

 continued and increased among their 

 descendants long after all reason for it 

 had disappeared. But even in the early 

 days far-sighted men began to consider 

 the safety of the forest. In 1653 the 

 authorities of Charlestown, in Massa- 

 chusetts, forbade the cutting of timber 

 on the town lands without permission 

 from the selectmen, and in 1689 the 

 neighboring town of Maiden fixed a pen- 

 alty of 5 shillings for cutting trees less 

 than 1 foot in diameter for fuel. An 

 ordinance of William Penn, made in 



1 68 1, required that 1 acre of land be 

 left covered with trees for every 5 acres 

 cleared. But these measures were not 

 well followed up, and the needless de- 

 struction of the forest went steadily on. 



FIRST STEPS IN FORESTRY 



More than a hundred years later, in 

 1795, a committee of the Society for the 

 Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, and 

 Manufactures in New York made a re- 

 port on the best way to preserve and 

 increase the growth of timber. Four 

 years afterward Congress appropriated 

 $200,000 for the purchase and preserva- 

 tion of timberlands to supply ship tim- 

 bers for the Navy, and in 1822, with the 

 same object in view, it authorized the 

 President to employ the Army and Navy 

 to protect and preserve the live-oak and 

 red cedar timber of the government in 

 Florida. Since that time more and more 

 attention has been given to the forests. 

 In 1828 Governor De Witt Clinton, of 

 New York, spoke of the reproduction of 

 our woods as an object of primary im- 

 portance, and in the same year the gov- 

 ernment began an attempt to cultivate 

 live oak in the South for the use of the 

 Navy. Three years later an act was 

 passed which is still almost the only pro- 

 tection for the much-abused forests of 

 the public domain. 



In 1872 the Yellowstone National 

 Park was established, and in 1873 Con- 

 gress passed the timber- culture act, 

 which gave government land in the tree- 

 less regions to whoever would plant one- 

 fourth of his claim with trees. In 1875 

 the American Forestry Association was 

 formed in Chicago through the efforts of 

 Dr John A. Warder, who was one of the 

 first men to agitate forest questions in 

 the United States. In the centennial 

 year (1876) Dr Franklin B. Hough, 

 perhaps the foremost pioneer of forestry 

 in America, was appointed special agent 

 in the Department of Agriculture. This 

 was the beginning of educational work 

 in forestry at Washington. Soon after- 



