Our Forestry Problem.
According to latest estimates, we consume yearly, with our present population of sixty millions, not less than twenty billion cubic feet of wood. The amount is made up, in round figures, in the following manner:
2,500,000,000 feet for lumber market and wood manufactures;
360,000,000 feet for railroad construction;
250,000,000 feet for charcoal;
500,000,000 feet for fence material, etc.;
17,500,000,000 feet for fuel.
To this it will be safe to add, for wasteful practices and for the destruction by yearly conflagrations, at the least, twenty‐five per cent.
The average yearly growth of wood per acre in the well stocked and well cared for forests of Germany has been computed at fifty cubic feet. Applying this figure to our present requirements, we should have an area of not less than five hundred million acres in well stocked forest to give us a continual supply of all kinds for our present needs. Now, a careful canvass made four years ago developed the result that the existing forest area in the United States, excluding Alaska and Indian Territory, comprised almost five hundred million acres (489,280,000); but it is well known to everybody who is acquainted with our forests that they cannot compare in yield with the average European Continental forests under systematic management. Much of what is reported as forest is useless brush land or open woods, and depreciated in its capacity for wood production by annual fires, by which the physical structure of the leaf mould is destroyed, and thus, too, its capacity for storing the needful moisture, reducing wood production, and killing all young growth.
Without care, without management, and left to the kind but uneconomical work of nature, interfered with, in addition, by rude and ignorant action of man, it is doubtful whether, on the existing area, one half the amount of wood is produced yearly which we now require. We have, therefore; beyond doubt, reached—if not passed—the time when increased drain means squandering of capital, and when regard to husbanding, to careful management, to recuperation of our forests, and planting of new forests is required for the purpose of merely furnishing raw material; and it should not be forgotten that to reproduce the quick growing white pine of an acceptable quality and sufficient size requires not less than eighty to one hundred years, and for the long leaved pine two hundred years; that, altogether, wood crops are slow crops; that nothing of size can be grown under a quarter of a century at the best.
That this is a business requiring intelligent national consideration is apparent. Not less so if we appreciate the magnitude of the values resulting from it. The total value of forest products in the census year was placed at $700,000,000, or ten times the value of the gold and silver production, five times the value of all coal and mineral production, and exceeding every one of the agricultural crops, corn and wheat not excepted; and representing in value about thirty per cent. of the total agricultural production.
Of injuries wrought locally by the reckless clearing of hill sides and of deterioration of the soil due to inconsiderate action of man, I could entertain you by the hour. The country is full of examples. Any one who wishes to study the effect of such denuding of hill sides upon the soil, the water flow, and agricultural conditions, need not go to France, Spain, Italy, Greece, or Palestine. The Adirondack Mountains are within easier reach, where the thin cover of earth exposed to the washing rains is carried into the rivers, leaving behind a bare, forbidding rock and desolation, while at Albany the Hudson River is being made unnavigable by the debris and soil carried down the river. The government has spent more than ten million dollars, I believe, and spends every year a goodly sum, to open out a passage over the sand bar thus formed.
Go to the eastern Rocky Mountains, or to Southern California, and you can gain an insight into the significance of regulated water supply for the agriculture below, and also learn how imprudently we have acted and are acting upon the knowledge of this significance by allowing the destruction of mountain forests in the most reckless and unprofitable manner. Along the shores of Lake Michigan, and along the sea coast, we are creating shifting sands by the removal of the forest cover, to make work for the ingenuity of our children in devising methods for fixing these sands again. The vegetable mould with which the kind forest had covered the alluvial sands of the southern coast plain we are taking pains to burn off in order to replace it with expensive artificial fertilizers.
That the great flood of the Ohio, which cost the country more than twenty million dollars, was entirely due to deforestation, I will not assert; but it must have been considerably aggravated by the accumulation of minor local floods, due to the well known reckless clearing of the hill sides, which sent their waters down into the river in torrents. At the season when the winter snows are melting, watch the newspapers, and you will find an almost daily mention of the disastrous ravages of brooks and streams, many of which injuries could have been prevented by avoiding the creation of their distant and indirect cause. Thus we may multiply examples all over the country, showing harmful local influences upon agricultural conditions due to forest devastation.
That the vast stretches of land in the Northwest, from which the white pine has been cut and burned off, present the aspect of a desolation which sickens the heart, you may hear from every one who has seen these deserts unnecessarily wrought by man. Every traveler in this country, be it to the White Mountains, to the Adirondacks, along the Alleghany Mountains, be it through the Rockies or the redwoods of California, cannot but be startled by the desolate, sad aspect of many of these once beautifully clad mountain crests.
And we are a nation hardly a hundred years old, with over thirty acres per capita to spread ourselves upon. What will become of us when we must live upon five acres per head? We are far enough advanced in our recklessness of disregarding the indirect significance of forest areas to have learned a lesson at home, and to feel the necessity of being more careful in the utilization of the forest, so as not to lose its protection for our agricultural and general interests.
The means for its solution I may only briefly indicate. They are education, example, encouragement, legislation. Some of these are of slow effect. Others can be made to give results at once. Let the United States government, which still holds some seventy million acres of the people’s land in forests, mostly on the Western mountains, where its preservation is most urgently needed—let the government set aside these otherwise valueless lands, and manage them as a national forest domain, and then the first effective step, a feasible and not a forcible one, is made. Let the military reservations on the Western treeless plains, which are still in the hands of the general government, be planted to forests and managed as such. This would be no doubtful experiment, would interfere with nobody, would enhance the value of the surrounding country—and education, example, and encouragement are provided, as far as it is in the legitimate province of the general government. And such example, instead of costing anything to the country, can be made self‐sustaining—nay, productive—and would add appreciably to the people’s wealth.—B. E. Fernow.
Mortar containing sugar has been employed in building the new Natural History Museum in Berlin, and has proved far superior to common mortar. It sets almost with the firmness of a good cement, while mortar made with molasses became soft and brittle after a time. In Madras a mortar is used with which either sugar, butter or buttermilk, shellac and eggs are mixed. It holds well and takes a marble‐like polish.