44 



THE UTILITY OF FORESTS. 



Among the most important — from this standpoint — of those 

 that spend the winter with us are the Downy, Hairy, and Red- 

 bellied Woodpeckers, the White-breasted Nuthatch, the Caro- 

 lina Chickadee, the Carolina Wren and the Song Sparrow. 



The birds, like the mammals, or even more than they, have 

 a very great value apart from their economic relation to for- 

 ests; and the protection of forests as a nesting place for birds 

 appeals to nearly all people. 



The Forest in Its Relation to the Character of the People. 



That there has been a great change in the character of the 

 people — especially rural people within the past 100 years — or 

 even in the past 50 years, all ^^ill admit. That the changes 

 have always been from worse to better is not so easily agreed 

 upon. 



There have doubtless been not a few but a very great num- 

 ber of tilings which have brought about the changes ; but cer- 

 tainly among them, as one of the chief, must be placed the cir- 

 cumstances that have grown out of the rapid development of 

 our natural resources. During a comparatively few years near- 

 ly the whole population which originally earned its living from 

 the ground has been pushed out from places of seclusion into 

 a whirl of modern industry. When the railroads and the saw 

 mills came in they brought with them a different class of people 

 whose manners and language were readily adopted by the 

 younger people. Thousands of young men were induced to en- 

 ter mines, factories and logging camps where they were thrown 

 into intimate association with a rough, drifting, foreign ele- 

 ment. It is a frequent and just complaint of farmers in our 

 own state that their sons have left the farms at a time when 

 they were most needed and have taken up other lines of work 

 in lumbering and mining sections and in the towns: that the 

 neglected farms have grown up in briers : that the young men 

 have become wholly dissatisfied with the work in which they 

 once took an interest; and that a spirit of selfishness and cool- 

 headed business has taken the place of the hospitality that once 

 prevailed. 



