300 
AMERICAN FORESTS. 
miles, in iron pipes, to reach a supply of fuel for boiling it 
down.* 
Forests of the United States and Canada. 
The vast forests of the United States and Canada cannot 
long resist the improvident habits of the backwoodsman and 
the increased demand for lumber. According to the census 
of the former country for 1860, which gives returns of the 
* Rentzsch {Der Wald , etc., pp. 123, 124) states the proportions of 
woodland in different European countries as follows: 
Per cent. 
Acres per 
head of pop¬ 
ulation. 
Per cent. 
Acres per 
head of popu¬ 
lation. 
Germany. 
26.58 
0.6638 
Switzerland. 
15. 
0.396 
Great Britain. 
5. 
0.1 
Holland. 
7.10 
0.12 
France. 
16.79 
0.3766 
Belgium. 
18.52 
0.186 
Russia. 
30.90 
4.28 
Spain. 
5.52 
0.291 
Sweden. 
60. 
8.55 
Portugal. 
4.40 
0.182 
Norway. 
66. 
24.61 
Sardinia. 
12.29 
0.223 
Denmark. 
5.50 
0.22 
Naples. 
9.43 
0.138 
Probably no European countries can so well dispense with the forests, 
in their capacity of conservative influences, as England and Ireland. Their 
insular position and latitude secure an abundance of atmospheric moisture, 
and the general inclination of surface is not such as to expose it to special 
injury from torrents. The due proportion of woodland in England and 
Ireland is, therefore, almost purely an economical question, to be decided 
by the comparative direct pecuniary return from forest growth, pasturage, 
and plough land. 
In Scotland, where the country is for the most part more broken and 
mountainous, the general destruction of the forests has been attended with 
very serious evils, and it is in Scotland that many of the most extensive 
British forest plantations have now been formed. But although the incli¬ 
nation of surface in Scotland is rapid, the geological constitution of the soil 
is not of a character to promote such destructive degradation by running 
water as in Southern France, and it has not to contend with the parching 
droughts by which the devastations of the torrents are rendered more in¬ 
jurious in that part of the French empire. 
In giving the proportion of woodland to population, I compute 
Rentzsch’s Morgen at .3882 of an English acre, because I find, by Alexan¬ 
der’s most accurate and valuable Dictionary of Weights and Measures, 
that this is the value of the Dresden Morgen, and Rentzsch is a Saxon 
writer. In the different German States, there are more than twenty dif- 
