House and Garden 
the great globe on which we were put to live along 
with many millions of other living things; every 
individual form of all creation is dependent on these 
trees for subsistence and existence and it is not the 
right of any individual or set of individuals to either 
use or destroy without replacing the things which 
form so great a part of the common good. Every 
well or spring is dependent on the forests which act 
as a great regulator of underground water veins; 
the lakes with their fish; our vegetables and fruits 
look to the wood in more ways than one for nourish¬ 
ment while they look also to the birds for protection 
from the ravages of insects, and the birds in turn de¬ 
pend on the woods for their homes. Only a few 
weeks ago I paid a high price for potatoes riddled 
with holes by insects which have been the food of 
certain birds; but in the locality where the vegetables 
were grown the trees have been cut away and those 
birds nested elsewhere. I know a stream which 
thirty-five years ago afforded power enough to run a 
mill but to-day there is not enough water in it to fur¬ 
nish a Christian baptism—it was fed from woodland 
springs among the hills which now are bare. The 
flora of the woods, too, is rapidly disappearing, many 
species being already extinct; but without thought 
the work of destruction goes on unchecked because 
those who have no title to the land can do nothing to 
stop it and those who have the title, will not. No 
trees, no birds, millions of insects,—worthless crops, 
fruit and vegetables:—Again; no trees, plenty of 
frost, arid acres, maximum of natural erosion, ex¬ 
treme heat, cold and wind,—and we have a place 
that is neither fit to live nor die in. 
It should be positively and quickly shown to all who 
hold the control of land that the very lives of all of us 
depend to an enormous degree upon the quiet work 
of our silent friends, the trees, that grow upon such 
land; the practice of cutting timber for firewood 
when the material is needed so urgently in other 
directions, is little short of criminal and should be 
stopped. In England a man who cuts his trees is 
held in contempt, but here—well, we do anything 
here on any pretext, for we are a liberty loving people 
in a republic where some get the liberty and others 
get the love. Only recently I pleaded with a high 
salaried official to save a great beech, but his commer¬ 
cialism, or rather vandalism, was stronger than his 
esthetic sense, if perchance, he had any esthetic sense, 
and down came the great monarch that had given 
pleasure and profit to thousands, and it will take one- 
hundred and forty-seven years to build another like 
it even if any of us knew how. Unfortunately such 
authority is often in a position where the ignorance 
and willfulness of one individual can affect the com¬ 
fort of many intelligent, practical and appreciative 
people; his work, like that of many others of his kind, 
is an insidious disease and is accomplished under the 
pretext of duty for the sake of private gain. 
Most men see no use for the trees outside their 
value as lumber or fuel but these are only two of their 
virtues out of several hundred we might catalog; 
perhaps only one of every five thousand ever give a 
tree credit for anything else but shade; one may as 
well say water is good for nothing but to drink. Few 
ever think of the forest as being a great radiator that 
gives off heat at night when the temperature lowers to 
the danger point of freezing the fruit buds; it acts 
at all times, both summer and winter, as a great 
equalizer of temperatures. In spring, temperatures 
are always on a delicate balance near the freezing 
point and at such times a forest close by a fruit farm 
will often save the crop. It is a fact that since the 
denudation of the hills the loss to fruit growers has 
been great and that our climate has become extremely 
variable, with the result that our apples and doctors’ 
bills come high. My experience while living in the 
woods has taught me that the temperature among the 
trees will average about eight degrees lower in sum¬ 
mer and five or six higher in winter, than it is outside 
—a fact well worth considering from several points of 
view. 
Beside the many economic values of the rapidly dis¬ 
appearing forests, as a means of relaxation and relief 
to wornout nerves and mind under the strain of life 
as practiced by United Statians, it can not be esti¬ 
mated, much less overlooked. Is it naught to us 
that in a few years we shall have nothing but treeless 
hills and sun-dried valleys to look upon ? Who 
knows but the extinction of the race of giants who 
lived on this continent many ages ago was due to 
forest destruction If we are trying to extinguish 
ourselves in the same manner there is no room for 
doubt as to the success of the experiment. 
The policy of mankind seems to have been de¬ 
struction from the very start; from the moment he 
found himself capable of doing things, he has done 
them,—regardless; he has not improved on Nature 
at all, merely changed the general forms of material. 
Some of us, perhaps a large number of us, think that 
the Earth was built right to begin with, but man’s 
ability coupled with the perversion of natural forces 
and the dispersion of natural resources, has not 
noticeably improved upon the Great Builder’s 
original plan; and we now find ourselves where we 
must concede that we have either wrought intentional 
havoc or acknowledge that we did not know how to 
use the material we found here on our arrival. We 
have already reached the point with regard to many 
things where it is not a question of, “What is the 
price.?” but, “Does it exist.?” and the only reason 
why we have not set up a wail sooner is because many 
of the things which have disappeared from mortal 
view were of no apparent use to man, but now that 
material we use and misuse every day is getting 
scarce, we become alarmed and with good reason; 
perhaps a scare will do us good. 
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