But our enumeration of the uses of trees is not yet complete. Besides the influence of the forest, in mountain ranges, as a means of preventing the scooping out of ravines and the accumulations of water which fill them, trees subserve a valuable purpose, in lower positions, as barriers against the spread of floods and of the material they transport with them; but this will be more appropriately considered in the chapter on the waters; and another very important use of trees, that of fixing movable sand-dunes, and reclaiming them to profitable cultivation, will be pointed out in the chapter on the sands.
The vast extension of railroads, of manufactures and the mechanical arts, of military armaments, and especially of the commercial fleets and navies of Christendom within the present century, has greatly augmented the demand for wood,[272] and, but for improvements in metallurgy which have facilitated the substitution of iron for that material, the last twenty-five years would almost have stripped Europe of her only remaining trees fit for such uses.[273] The walnut trees alone felled in Europe within two years to furnish the armies of America with gunstocks, would form a forest of no inconsiderable extent.[274]
The Forests of Europe.
Mirabeau estimated the forests of France in 1750 at seventeen millions of hectares [42,000,000 acres]; in 1860 they were reduced to eight millions [19,769,000 acres]. This would be at the rate of 82,000 hectares [202,600 acres] per year. Troy, from whose valuable pamphlet, Étude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes, I take these statistical details, supposes that Mirabeau's statement may have been an extravagant one, but it still remains certain that the waste has been enormous; for it is known that, in some departments, that of Ariège, for instance, clearing has gone on during the last half century at the rate of three thousand acres a year,[275] and in all parts of the empire trees have been felled faster than they have grown. The total area of France, excluding Savoy, is about one hundred and thirty-one millions of acres. The extent of forest supposed by Mirabeau would be about thirty-two per cent. of the whole territory.[276] In a country and a climate where the conservative influences of the forest are so necessary as in France, trees must cover a large surface and be grouped in large masses, in order to discharge to the best advantage the various functions assigned to them by nature. The consumption of wood is rapidly increasing in that empire, and a large part of its territory is mountainous, sterile, and otherwise such in character or situation that it can be more profitably devoted to the growth of wood than to any agricultural use. Hence it is evident that the proportion of forest in 1750, taking even Mirabeau's large estimate, was not very much too great for permanent maintenance, though doubtless the distribution was so unequal that it would have been sound policy to fell the woods and clear land in some provinces, while large forests should have been planted in others.[277] During the period in question, France neither exported manufactured wood or rough timber, nor derived important collateral advantages of any sort from the destruction of her forests. She is consequently impoverished and crippled to the extent of the difference between what she actually possesses of wooded surface and what she ought to have retained.
Italy and Spain are bared of trees in a greater degree than France, and even Russia, which we habitually consider as substantially a forest country, is beginning to suffer seriously for want of wood. Jourdier, as quoted by Clavé, observes: "Instead of a vast territory with immense forests, which we expect to meet, one sees only scattered groves thinned by the wind or by the axe of the moujik, grounds cut over and more or less recently cleared for cultivation. There is probably not a single district in Russia which has not to deplore the ravages of man or of fire, those two great enemies of Muscovite sylviculture. This is so true, that clear-sighted men already foresee a crisis which will become terrible, unless the discovery of great deposits of some new combustible, as pit coal or anthracite, shall diminish its evils."[278]
Germany, from character of surface and climate, and from the attention which has long been paid in all the German States to sylviculture, is, taken as a whole, in a far better condition in this respect than its more southern neighbors; but in the Alpine provinces of Bavaria and Austria, the same improvidence which marks the rural economy of the corresponding districts of Switzerland, Italy, and France, is producing effects hardly less disastrous. As an instance of the scarcity of fuel in some parts of the territory of Bavaria, where, not long since, wood abounded, I may mention the fact that the water of salt springs is, in some instances, conveyed to the distance of sixty miles, in iron pipes, to reach a supply of fuel for boiling it down.[279]
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 "sawed and planed lumber" alone, timber for framing and for a vast variety of mechanical purposes being omitted altogether, the value of the former material prepared for market in the United States was, in 1850, $58,521,976; in 1860, $95,912,286. The quantity of unsawed lumber is not likely to have increased in the same proportion, because comparatively little is exported in that condition, and because masonry is fast taking the place of carpentry in building, and stone, brick, and iron are used instead of timber more largely than they were ten years ago. Still a much greater quantity of unsawed lumber must have been marketed in 1860 than in 1850. It must further be admitted that the price of lumber rose considerably between those dates, and consequently that the increase in quantity is not to be measured by the increase in pecuniary value. Perhaps this rise of prices may even be sufficient to make the entire difference between the value of "sawed and planed lumber" produced in the ten years in question by the six New England States (21 per cent.), and the six Middle States (15 per cent.); but the amount produced by the Western and by the Southern States had doubled, and that returned from the Pacific States and Territories had trebled in value in the same interval, so that there was certainly, in those States, a large increase in the actual quantity prepared for sale.
I greatly doubt whether any one of the American States, except, perhaps, Oregon, has, at this moment, more woodland than it ought permanently to preserve, though, no doubt, a different distribution of the forests in all of them might be highly advantageous. It is a great misfortune to the American Union that the State Governments have so generally disposed of their original domain to private citizens. It is true that public property is not sufficiently respected in the United States; and it is also true that, within the memory of almost every man of mature age, timber was of so little value in that country, that the owners of private woodlands submitted, almost without complaint, to what would be regarded elsewhere as very aggravated trespasses upon them.[280] Under such circumstances, it is difficult to protect the forest, whether it belong to the state or to individuals. Property of this kind would be subject to much plunder, as well as to frequent damage by fire. The destruction from these causes would, indeed, considerably lessen, but would not wholly annihilate the climatic and geographical influences of the forest, or ruinously diminish its value as a regular source of supply of fuel and timber. For prevention of the evils upon which I have so long dwelt, the American people must look to the diffusion of general intelligence on this subject, and to the enlightened self interest, for which they are remarkable, not to the action of their local or general legislatures. Even in France, government has moved with too slow and hesitating a pace, and preventive measures do not yet compensate destructive causes. The judicious remarks of Troy on this point may well be applied to other countries than France, other measures of public policy than the preservation of the woods. "To move softly," says he, "is to commit the most dangerous, the most unpardonable of imprudences; it diminishes the prestige of authority; it furnishes a triumph to the sneerer and the incredulous; it strengthens opposition and encourages resistance; it ruins the administration in the opinion of the people, weakens its power and depresses its courage."[281]