THE NECESSITY FOR FORESTS IN THE FUTURE. 



65 



and hardwoods which have naturally sprung up? Moreover, it 

 may be thought that in that length of time a large part of the 

 original forest growth will still remain uncut. 



An examination of the facts in the case will yield an answer. 

 Ten years ago it was thought that the supply of white pine was 

 inexhaustible in Michigan, which State then had far the largest 

 bodies of pine, and in fact nearly all the merchantable white pine 

 in the United States except that in Wisconsin, Minnesota and some 

 in West Virginia. Bulletin No. 5 of the Eleventh U. S. Census 

 showed that in 1890 Michigan had an output of white pine of 

 about 10,000,000,000 feet, board measure (including shingles), and 

 that there was supposed to be only enough timber standing to last 

 the mills for five years longer. Many persons even then ridiculed 

 the idea of the exhaustion of the white pine. A few^ months ago 

 the Northwestern Lumberman, which had most loudly proclaimed 

 that the white pine was inexhaustible, announced that this season 

 there would be in one district a shortage amounting to many 

 million feet, and that the total shortage in Michigan alone would 

 probably amount to over a billion feet, board measure. Other soft 

 w^oods, yellow^ poplar, etc., will probably be sawn to take its place 

 for several years, and will come from Kentucky, Tennessee, North 

 Carolina and other regions in the Appalachian mountains. 



In ten years from now^ the forests of Michigan wnll have been a 

 thing of the past, so that within fifty years after lumbering began 

 on a commercial scale the white pine and probably the best hard- 

 woods w^ill have been cut out. These forests of Michigan cut from 

 two to three times as much mixed hardwood and pine to the acre 

 as the pine lands of eastern North Carolina will now yield, after 

 having been picked over for two hundred years. 



The forests of Washington are as yet in a nearly virgin condition 

 and are probably the finest in the world. They will cut three 

 times as much to the acre as the pine lands of eastern North Caro- 

 lina, and although the amount of standing timber was estimated 

 on January 1, 1894, to be near 400,000,000,000 feet, board measure, 

 yet such is the' enormous destruction of timber by fire and the 

 rapid increase in the milling industry, which now-cuts only 1,000,- 

 000,000 feet a year in that State, that those forests will probably 

 not last longer than fifty years. 



