DUTY OF PRESERVING TIIE FOREST. 
327 
The growth of arboreal vegetation is so slow that, though 
he who buries an acorn may hope to see it shoot up to a min¬ 
iature resemblance of the majestic tree w T hicli shall shade his 
remote descendants, yet the longest life hardly embraces the 
seedtime and the harvest of a forest. The planter of a wood 
must be actuated by higher motives than those of an invest¬ 
ment the profits of which consist in direct pecuniary gain to 
himself or even to his posterity; for if, in rare cases, an arti¬ 
ficial forest may, in two or three generations, more than repay 
its original cost, still, in general, the value of its timber will not 
return the capital expended and the interest accrued.* But 
when we consider the immense collateral advantages derived 
from the presence, the terrible evils necessarily resulting from 
the destruction of the forest, both the preservation of existing 
woods, and the far more costly extension of them where they 
have been unduly reduced, are among the most obvious of the 
duties which this age owes to those that are to come after it. 
Especially is this obligation incumbent upon Americans. No 
civilized people profits so largely from the toils and sacrifices 
of its immediate predecessors as they; no generations have 
* According to Clav6 (Etudes, p. 159), the net revenue from the forests 
of the state in France, making no allowance for interest on the capital 
represented by the forest, is two dollars per acre. In Saxony it is about 
the same, though the cost of administration is twice as much as in France; 
in Wiirtemberg it is about a dollar an acre ; and in Prussia, where half the 
income is consumed in the expenses of administration, it sinks to less than 
half a dollar. This low rate in Prussia is partly explained by the fact that 
a considerable proportion of the annual product of wood is either conceded 
to persons claiming prescriptive rights, or sold, at a very small price, to 
the poor. Taking into account the capital invested in forest land, and 
adding interest upon it, Pressler calculates that a pine wood, managed with 
a view to felling it when eighty years old, would yield only one eighth of 
one per cent, annual profit; a fir wood, at one hundred years, one sixth of 
one per cent.; a beech wood, at one hundred and twenty years, one fourth 
of one per cent. The same author (p. 335) gives the net income of the 
FTew forest in England, over and above expenses, interest not computed, at 
twenty-five cents per acre only. In America, where no expense is be¬ 
stowed upon the woods, the annual growth would generally be estimated 
much higher. 
