The Study of Forestry. 
BY GEO. R. FAIRBANKS, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE. 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
The subject of forestry has attracted 
much attention in the last few years. It 
has been the practice, and regarded as a 
most practical course to pursue, from 
the settlement of this continent, to clear 
away its forest growth in every direc¬ 
tion. Log heaps and forest fires have 
been looked upon as the necessary ad¬ 
juncts of progressive civilization. 
We have at last reached a point where 
we have been forced to look forward to 
the eventual results of this destructive 
policy. Fields, first denuded of all tim¬ 
ber, have been cultivated to the point 
where nature has revenged itself by bar¬ 
renness, and, scarred and seamed, they 
have presented a waste of unsightly bald¬ 
ness. The fields taken in have under¬ 
gone the same process of being reduced 
to worthlessness, and profitable culture 
of staple crops has only been attained by 
a large expenditure for artificial fertiliz¬ 
ers, needing annually to be renewed. 
The water supply has diminished, 
streams and wells have gone dry for long 
periods, to be succeeded by destructive 
torrents, sweeping down the barren hill¬ 
sides, engorging the streams and carry¬ 
ing death and destruction along their 
borders. 
The Southern States were originally 
clothed with magnificent forests of pine, 
of a species combining all the best qual¬ 
ities of beauty and durability, superior 
in every respect to any other known tim¬ 
ber for all the uses to which timber is ap¬ 
plied. We have vied with each other 
in destroying these monarchs of the 
woods, to be manufactured for others’ 
profit, at a price to us insignificant and 
profitless. We now begin to realize our 
folly and to look with anxiety to the 
future, when the remainder of our once 
splendid forests shall have disappeared. 
Few of us realize how rapidly our pine 
forests are being destroyed. There was 
shipped during the year 1900 over one 
hundred million feet each from the ports 
of Fernandina and Jacksonville. To 
make two hundred million feet of sawed 
lumber, counting four trees to a thous¬ 
and feet, would require 4,000 trees to 
each million feet, and 400,000 trees to 
furnish the lumber shipped from these 
two ports alone; and, taking an average 
of four trees to the acre, it would take 
the mill-logs off from 100,000 acres of 
land. If we add to this the millions of 
crossties, we shall to some degree realize 
how fast the destruction of our forest 
growth is proceeding. But we have 
been counting the lumber destruction 
alone. After going over the pine lands 
of North Carolina, South Carolina and 
Georgia in part, the turpentine or naval 
stores operators have come into Florida 
and spread like locusts over all the lands 
