The accidental escape and spread of fire_The Earth as Modified by Human Action

forests by lightning, must have first suggested the advantages to be

derived from the removal of too abundant and extensive woods, and at the

same time, have pointed out a means by which a large tract of surface

could readily be cleared of much of this natural incumbrance. As soon as

agriculture had commenced at all, it would be observed that the growth

of cultivated plants, as well as of many species of wild vegetation, was

particularly rapid and luxuriant on soils which had been burned over,

and thus a new stimulus would be given to the practice of destroying the

woods by fire, as a means of both extending the open grounds, and making

the acquisition of a yet more productive soil. After a few harvests had

exhausted the first rank fertility of this virgin mould, or when weeds

and briers and the sprouting roots of the trees had begun to choke the

crops of the half-subdued soil, the ground would be abandoned for new

fields won from the forest by the same means, and the deserted plain or

hillock would soon clothe itself anew with shrubs and trees, to be again

subjected to the same destructive process, and again surrendered to the

restorative powers of vegetable nature. [Footnote: In many parts of the

North American States, the first white settlers found extensive tracts

of thin woods, of a very park-like character, called "oak-openings,"

from the predominance of different species of that tree upon them. These

were the semi-artificial pasture-grounds of the Indians, brought into

that state, and so kept, by partial clearing, and by the annual burning

of the grass. The object of this operation was to attract the deer to

the fresh herbage which sprang up after the fire. The oaks bore the

annual scorching at least for a certain time; but if it had been

indefinitely continued, they would very probably have been destroyed at

last. The soil would have then been much in the prairie condition, and

would have needed nothing but grazing for a long succession of years to

make the resemblance perfect. That the annual fires alone occasioned the

peculiar character of the oak-openings, is proved by the fact that as

soon as the Indians had left the country, young trees of many species

sprang up and grew luxuriantly upon them. See a very interesting account

of the oak-openings in Dwight s Travels, iv., pp. 58-63. This rude

economy would be continued for generations, and, wasteful as it is, is

still largely pursued in Northern Sweden, Swedish Lapland, and sometimes

even in France and the United States. [Footnote: The practice of burning

over woodland, at once to clear and manure the ground, is called in

Swedieh svedjande, a participial noun from the verb att svedja, to burn

over. Though used in Sweden as a preparation for crops of rye or other

grain, it is employed in Lapland more frequently to secure an abundant

growth of pasturage, which follows in two or three years after the fire;

and it is sometimes resorted to as a mode of driving the Laplanders and

their reindeer from the vicinity of the Swedish backwoodsman's

grass-grounds and hay-stacks, to which they are dangerous neighbors. The

forest, indeed, rapidly recovers itself, but it is a generation or more

before the reindeer-moss grows again. When the forest consists of pine,

tall, the ground, instead of being rendered fertile by this process,

becomes hopelessly barren, and for a long time afterwards produces

nothing but weeds and briers.--Laestadius, Om Uppodlingar i Lappmarken,

p. 15. See also Schubert, Resa i Sverge, ii., p. 375.

In some parts of France this practice is so general that Clave says: "In

the department of Ardennes it (le sartage) is the basis of agriculture."]

Principal Causes of the Destruction of the Forest.

The needs of agriculture are the most familiar cause of the destruction

of the forest in new countries; for not only does an increasing

population demand additional acres to grow the vegetables which feed it

and its domestic animals, but the slovenly husbandry of the border

settler soon exhausts the luxuriance of his first fields, and compels

him to remove his household gods to a fresher soil. The extent of

cleared ground required for agricultural use depends very much on the

number and kinds of the cattle bred. We have seen, in a former chapter,

that, in the United States, the domestic quadrupeds amount to more than

a hundred millions, or nearly three times the number of the human

population of the Union. In many of the Western States, the swine

subsist more or less on acorns, nuts, and other products of the woods,

and the prairies, or natural meadows of the Mississippi valley, yield a

large amount of food for beast, as well as for man. With these

exceptions, all this vast army of quadrupeds is fed wholly on grass,

grain, pulse, and roots grown on soil reclaimed from the forest by

European settlers. It is true that the flesh of domestic quadrupeds

enters very largely into the aliment of the American people, and greatly

reduces the quantity of vegetable nutriment which they would otherwise

consume, so that a smaller amount of agricultural product is required

for immediate human food, and, of course, a smaller extent of cleared

land is needed for the growth of that product, than if no domestic

animals existed. But the flesh of the horse, the ass, and the mule is

not consumed by man, and the sheep is reared rather for its fleece than

for food. Besides this, the ground required to produce the grass and

grain consumed in rearing and fattening a grazing quadruped, would yield

a far larger amount of nutriment, if devoted to the growing of

breadstuffs, than is furnished by his flesh; and, upon the whole,

whatever advantages may be reaped from the breeding of domestic cattle,

it is plain that the cleared land devoted to their sustenance in the

originally wooded part of the United States, after deducting a quantity

sufficient to produce an amount of aliment equal to their flesh, still

greatly exceeds that cultivated for vegetables, directly consumed by the

people of the same regions; or, to express a nearly equivalent idea in

other words, the meadow and the pasture, taken together, much exceed the

ploughland. [Footnote: The two ideas expressed in the text are not

exactly equivalent, because, though the consumption of animal food

diminishes the amount of vegetable aliment required for human use, yet

the animals themselves consume a great quantity of grain and roots grown

on ground ploughed and cultivated as regularly and as laboriously as any

other.

The 280,000,000 bushels of oats raised in the United States in 1870, and

fed to the 7,000,000 horses, the potatoes, the turnips, and the maize

employed in fattening the oxen, the sheep, and the swine slaughtered the

same year, occupied an extent of ground which, cultivated by hand-labor

and with Chinese industry and skill, would probably have produced a

quantity of vegetable food equal in alimentary power to the flesh of the

quadrupeds killed for domestic use. Hence, so far as the naked question

of AMOUNT of aliment is concerned, the meadows and the pastures might as

well have remained in the forest condition. It must, however, be borne

in mind that animal labor, if not a necessary, is probably an

economical, force in agricultural occupations, and that without animal

manure many branches of husbandry could hardly be carried on at all. At

the same time, the introduction of machinery into rural industry, and of

artificial, mineral, and fossil manures, is working great revolutions,

and we may find at some future day that the ox is no longer necessary as

a help to the farmer.]

Governments and military commanders have at different periods

deliberately destroyed forests by fire or the axe, because they afforded

a retreat to robbers, outlaws, or enemies, and this was one of the

hostile measures practised by both Julius Caesar and the Gauls in the

Roman war of conquest against that people. It was also resorted to in

the Mediterranean provinces of France, then much infested by robbers and

deserters, as late as the reign of Napoleon I., and is said to have been

employed by the early American colonists in their exterminating wars

with the native Indians. [Footnote: For many instances of this sort, see

Maury, Les Forets de la Gaule, pp. 3-5, and Becquerel, Des Climats,

etc., pp. 301-303. In 1664 the Swedes made an incursion into Jutland and

felled a considerable extent of forest. After they retired, a survey of

the damage was had, and the report is still extant. The number of trees

cut was found to be 120,000, and as an account was taken of the numbers

of each species of tree, the document is of much interest in the history

of the forest, as showing the relative proportions between the different

trees which at that time composed the wood. See Vaupell, Bogens

Indvandring, p. 35, and Notes, p. 55.]

In the Middle Ages, as well as in earlier and later centuries, attempts

have been made to protect the woods by law, [Footnote: Stanley, quoting

Selden, De Jure Naturali, lib. vi., and Fabricius, Cod. Psedap., V. T.,

i. 874, mentions a noteworthy Hebrew tradition of uncertain date, but

unquestionably very ancient, which is one of the oldest proofs of a

public respect for the woods.

"A Hebrew tradition attributes to Joshua ten statutes, containing

precise regulations for the protection of the property of every tribe

and of every head of a family against irregular depredations. Small

quadrupeds were allowed to pasture in dense woods, not in thin ones; but

no animal could feed in any forest without the consent of the proprietor

of the soil. Every Hebrew might pick up fallen boughs and twigs, but was

not permitted to cut them. Trees might be pruned for the trimmings, with

the exception of the olive and other fruit-trees, and provided there was

sufficient shade in the place."--Lectures on the History of the Jewish

Church, part i., p. 271.

Alfred Maury mentions several provisions taken from the laws of the

Indian legislator Manu, on the same subject.--Les Forets de la Gaule, p.

The very ancient Tables of Heracles contain provisions for the

protection of woods, but whether these referred only to sacred groves,

to public forests, or to leased lands, is not clear.] as necessary for

the breeding of deer, wild boars, and other game, or for the more

reasonable purpose of furnishing a supply of building timber and fuel

for future generations. It was reserved for more advanced ages to

appreciate the geographical importance of the woods, and it is only in

the most recent times, only in a few countries of Europe, that the

general destruction of the forests has been recognized as the most

potent among the many causes of the physical deterioration of the earth.

[Footnote: We must perhaps make an exception in favor of the Emperor

Constantine, who commenced the magnificent series of aqueducts and

cisterns which still supply Constantinople with water, and enacted

strict laws for the protection of the forest of Belgrade, in which rise

the springs that feed the aqueducts. See an article by Mr. H. A. Homes

on the Water-Supply of Constantinople in the Albany Argus of June 6,

1872.]

Royal Forests and Game Laws.

The French authors I have quoted, as well as many other writers of the

same nation, refer to the French Revolution as having given a new

impulse to destructive causes which were already threatening the total

extermination of the woods. [Footnote: Religious intolerance had

produced similar effects in France at an earlier period. "The revocation

of the edict of Nantes and the dragonnades occasioned the sale of the

forests of the unhappy Protestants, who fled to seek in foreign lands

the liberty of conscience which was refused to them in France. The

forests were soon felled by the purchasers, and the soil in part brought

under cultivation."--Becquerel, Des Climats, etc, p. 303.] The general

crusade against the forests, which accompanied that important event, is

to be ascribed, in a considerable degree, to political resentments. The

forest codes of the mediaeval kings, and the local "coutumes" of

feudalism, contained many severe and even inhuman provisions, adopted

rather for the preservation of game than from any enlightened views of

the more important functions of the woods. Ordericus Vitalis informs us

that William the Conqueror destroyed sixty parishes and drove out their

inhabitants, in order that he might turn their lands into a forest,

[Footnote: The American reader must be reminded that, in the language of

the chase and of the English law, a "forest" is not necessarily a wood.

Any large extent of ground, withdrawn from cultivation, reserved for the

pleasures of the chase, and allowed to clothe itself with a spontaneous

growth, serving as what is technically called "cover" for wild animals,

is, in the dialects I have mentioned, a forest. When, therefore, the

Norman kings afforested the grounds referred to in the text, it is not

to be supposed that they planted them with trees, though the protection

afforded to them by the game laws would, if cattle had been kept out,

soon have converted them into real woods.] to be reserved as a

hunting-ground for himself and his posterity, and he punished with death

the killing of a deer, wild boar, or even a hare. His successor, William

Rufus, according to the Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et des Rois

d'Angleterre, p. 67, "was hunting one day in a new forest, which he had

caused to be made out of eighteen parishes that he had destroyed, when,

by mischance, he was killed by an arrow wherewith Tyreus de Rois [Sir

Walter Tyrell] thought to slay a beast, but missed the beast, and slew

the king, who was beyond it. And in this very same forest, his brother

Richard ran so hard against a tree that he died of it. And men commonly

said that these things were because they had so laid waste and taken the

said parishes."

These barbarous acts, as Bonnemere observes, [Footnote: Histoire des

Paysans, ii., p. 190. The work of Bonnemere is of great value to those

who study the history of mediaeval Europe from a desire to know its real

character, and not in the hope of finding apparent facts to sustain a

false and dangerous theory. Bonnemere is one of the few writers who,

like Michelet, have been honest enough and bold enough to speak the

truth with regard to the relations between the church and the people in

the Middle Ages.] were simply the transfer of the customs of the French

kings, of their vassals, and even of inferior gentlemen, to conquered

England. "The death of a hare," says our author, "was a hanging matter,

the murder of a plover a capital crime. Death was inflicted on those who

spread nets for pigeons; wretches who had drawn a bow upon a stag were

to be tied to the animal alive; and among the seigniors it was a

standing excuse for having killed game on forbidden ground, that they

aimed at a serf." The feudal lords enforced these codes with unrelenting

rigor, and not unfrequently took the law into their own hands. In the

time of Louis IX., according to William of Nangis, "three noble

children, born in Flanders, who were sojourning at the abbey of St.

Nicholas in the Wood, to learn the speech of France, went out into the

forest of the abbey, with their bows and iron-headed arrows, to disport

them in shooting hares, chased the game, which they had started in the

wood of the abbey, into the forest of Enguerrand, lord of Coucy, and

were taken by the sergeants which kept the wood. When the fell and

pitiless Sir Enguerrand knew this, he had the children straightway

hanged without any manner of trial." [Footnote: It is painful to add

that a similar outrage was perpetrated a very few years ago, in one of

the European states, by a prince of a family now dethroned. In this

case, however, the prince killed the trespasser with his own hand, his

sergeants refusing to execute his mandate.] The matter being brought to

the notice of good King Louis, Sir Enguerrand was summoned to appear,

and, finally, after many feudal shifts and dilatory pleas, brought to

trial before Louis himself and a special council. Notwithstanding the

opposition of the other seigniors, who, it is needless to say, spared no

efforts to save a peer, probably not a greater criminal than themselves,

the king was much inclined to inflict the punishment of death on the

proud baron. "If he believed," said he, "that our Lord would be as well

content with hanging as with pardoning, he would hang Sir Enguerrand in

spite of all his barons;" but noble and clerical interests unfortunately

prevailed. The king was persuaded to inflict a milder retribution, and

the murderer was condemned to pay ten thousand livres in coin, and to

"build for the souls of the three children two chapels wherein mass

should be said every day." [Footnote: Guillame De Nangis, as quoted in

the notes to Joinville, Nouvelle Collection des Memoires, etc., par

Michaud et Poujoulat, premiere serie, i., p. 335. Persons acquainted

with the character and influence of the mediaeval clergy will hardly

need to be informed that the ten thousand livres never found their way

to the royal exchequer. It was easy to prove to the simple-minded king

that, as the profits of sin were a monopoly of the church, he ought not

to derive advantage from the commission of a crime by one of his

subjects; and the priests were cunning enough both to secure to

themselves the amount of the fine, and to extort from Louis large

additional grants to carry out the purposes to which they devoted the

money. "And though the king did take the moneys," says the chronicler,

"he put them not into his treasury, but turned them into good works; for

he builded therewith the maison-Dieu of Pontoise, and endowed the same

with rents and lands; also the schools and the dormitory of the friars

preachers of Paris, and the monastery of the Minorite friars."] The hope

of shortening the purgatorial term of the young persons, by the

religious rites to be celebrated in the chapels, was doubtless the

consideration which operated most powerfully on the mind of the king;

and Europe lost a great example for the sake of a mass.

The desolation and depopulation, resulting from the extension of the

forest and the enforcement of the game laws, induced several of the

French kings to consent to some relaxation of the severity of these

latter. Francis I., however, revived their barbarous provisions, and,

according to Bonnemere, even so good a monarch as Henry IV. re-enacted

them, and "signed the sentence of death upon peasants guilty of having

defended their fields against devastation by wild beasts." "A fine of

twenty livres," he continues, "was imposed on every one shooting at

pigeons, which, at that time, swooped down by thousands upon the

new-sown fields and devoured the seed. But let us count even this a

progress, for we have seen that the murder of a pigeon had been a

capital crime." [Footnote: Histoire des Paysans, ii., p. 200.]

Not only were the slightest trespasses on the forest domain--the cutting

of an oxgoad, for instance--severely punished, but game animals were

still sacred when they had wandered from their native precincts and were

ravaging the fields of the peasantry. A herd of deer or of wild boars

often consumed or trod down a harvest of grain, the sole hope of the

year for a whole family; and the simple driving out of such animals from

this costly pasturage brought dire vengeance on the head of the rustic,

who had endeavored to save his children's bread from their voracity. "At

all times," says Paul Louis Courier, speaking in the name of the

peasants of Chambord, in the "Simple Discours," "the game has made war

upon us. Paris was blockaded eight hundred years by the deer, and its

environs, now so rich, so fertile, did not yield bread enough to support

the gamekeepers." [Footnote: The following details from Bonnemere will

serve to give a more complete idea of the vexatious and irritating

nature of the game laws of France. The officers of the chase went so far

as to forbid the pulling up of thistles and weeds, or the mowing of any

unenclosed ground before St. John's day (24th June), in order that the

nests of game birds might not be disturbed. It was unlawful to fence-in

any grounds in the plains where royal residences were situated; thorns

were ordered to be planted in all fields of wheat, barley, or oats, to

prevent the use of ground-nets for catching the birds which consumed, or

were believed to consume, the grain, and it was forbidden to cut or pull

stubble before the first of October, lest the partridge and the quail

might be deprived of their cover. For destroying the eggs of the quail,

a fine of one hundred livres was imposed for the first offence, double

that amount for the second, and for the third the culprit was flogged

and banished for five years to a distance of six leagues from the

forest.--Histoire des Paysans, ii., p. 202, text and notes.

Neither these severe penalties, nor any provisions devised by the

ingenuity of modern legislation, have been able effectually to repress

poaching. "The game laws," says Clave, "have not delivered us from the

poachers, who kill twenty times as much game as the sportsmen. In the

forest of Fontainebleau, as in all those belonging to the state,

poaching is a very common and a very profitable offence. It is in vain

that the gamekeepers are on the alert night and day, they cannot prevent

it. Those who follow the trade begin by carefully studying the habits of

the game. They will lie motionless on the ground, by the roadside or in

thickets, for whole days, watching the paths most frequented by the

animals," etc.--Revue des Deux Mondes, Mai, 1863, p. 160.

The writer adds many details on this subject, and it appears that, as

there are "beggars on horseback" in South America, there are poachers in

carriages in France.] The Tiers Etat declared, in 1789, "the most

terrible scourge of agriculture is the abundance of wild game, a

consequence of the privileges of the chase; the fields are wasted, the

forests ruined, and the vines gnawed down to the roots."

Effects of the French Revolution.

The abrogation of the game laws and of the harsh provisions of the

forestal code was one of the earliest measures of the revolutionary

government; and the removal of the ancient restrictions on the chase and

of the severe penalties imposed on trespassers upon the public forests,

was immediately followed by unbridled license in the enjoyment of the

newly conceded rights.

In the popular mind the forest was associated with all the abuses of

feudalism, and the evils the peasantry had suffered from the legislation

which protected both it and the game it sheltered, blinded them to the

still greater physical mischiefs which its destruction was to entail

upon them. No longer under the safeguard of the law, the crown forests

and those of the great lords were attacked with relentless fury,

unscrupulously plundered and wantonly laid waste, and even the rights of

property in small private woods ceased to be respected. [Footnote:

"Whole trees were sacrificed for the most insignificant purposes; the

peasants would cut down two firs to make a single pair of wooden

shoes."--Michelet, as quoted by Clave. Etudes, p. 24.

A similar wastefulness formerly prevailed in Russia, though not from the

same cause. In St. Pierre's time, the planks brought to St. Petersburg

were not sawn, but hewn with the axe, and a tree furnished but a single

plank.] Various absurd theories, some of which are not even yet

exploded, were propagated with regard to the economical advantages of

converting the forest into pasture and plough-land, the injurious

effects of the woods upon climate, health, facility of internal

communication, and the like. Thus resentful memory of the wrongs

associated with the forest, popular ignorance, and the cupidity of

speculators cunning enough to turn these circumstances to profitable

account, combined to hasten the sacrifice of the remaining woods, and a

waste was produced which hundreds of years and millions of treasure will

hardly repair.

In the era of savage anarchy which followed the beneficent reforms of

1789, economical science was neglected, and statistical details upon the

amount of the destruction of woods during that period are wanting. But

it is known to have been almost incalculably rapid, and the climatic and

financial evils, which elsewhere have been a more gradual effect of this

cause, began to make themselves felt in France within three or four

years after that memorable epoch. [Footnote: See Becquerel, Memoire sur

les Forets, in the Mem. de l'Academie des Sciences, c. XXXV., p. 411 et

seqq.

Similar circumstances produced a like result, though on a far smaller

scale, in Italy, at a very recent period. Gallenga says: "The

destruction of the majestic timber [between the Vals Sesia and Sessera]

dates no farther back than 1848, when, on the first proclamation of the

Constitution, the ignorant boor had taken it for granted that all the

old social ties would be loosened, and therefore the old forest-laws

should be at once set at naught."--Country Life in Piedmont, p. 136.]

Increased Demand for Lumber.

With increasing population and the development of new industries, come

new drains upon the forest from the many arts for which wood is the

material. The demands of the near and the distant market for this

product excite the cupidity of the hardy forester, and a few years of

that wild industry of which Springer's "Forest Life and Forest Trees" so

vividly depicts the dangers and the triumphs, suffice to rob the most

inaccessible glens of their fairest ornaments. The value of timber

increases with its dimensions in almost geometrical proportion, and the

tallest, most vigorous, and most symmetrical trees fall the first

sacrifice. This is a fortunate circuinritiinco for the remainder of the

wood; for the impatient lumberman contents himself with felling a few of

the best trees, and then hurries on to take his tithe of still virgin

groves.

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 incredibly

augmented the demand for wood, [Footnote: Let us take the supply of

timber for railroad-ties. According to Clave (p. 248), France had, in

1862, 9,000 kilometres of railway in operation, 7,000 in construction,

half of which is built with a double track. Adding turn-outs and extra

tracks at stations, the number of ties required for a single track is

stated at 1,200 to the kilometre, or, as Clave computes, for the entire

network of France, 58,000,000. This number is too large, for 16,000 +

8,000 for the double track halfway = 24,000, and 24,000 x 1,200 =

28,800,000. In an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July, 1863,

Gandy states that 2,000,000 trees had been felled to furnish the ties

for the French railroads, and as the ties must be occasionally renewed,

and new railways have been constructed since 1863, we may probably

double this number.

The United States had in operation on the first of January, 1872, 61,000

miles, or about 97,000 kilometres, of railroad. Allowing the same

proportion as in France, the American railroads required 116,400,000

ties. The Report of the Agricultural Department of the United States for

November and December, 1869, estimates the number of ties annually

required for our railways at 30,000,000, and supposes that 150,000 acres

of the best woodland must be felled to supply this number. This is

evidently an error, perhaps a misprint for 15,000. The same authority

calculates the annual expenditure of the American railroads for lumber

for buildings, repairs, and cars, at $38,000,000, and for locomotive

fuel, at the rate of 10,000 cords of wood per day, at $50,000,000.

The walnut trees cut in Italy and France to furnish gunstocks to the

American army, during our late civil war, would alone have formed a

considerable forest. A single establishment in Northern Italy used

twenty-eight thousand large walnut trees for that purpose in the years

1862 and 1863.

The consumption of wood for lucifer matches is enormous, and I have

heard of several instances where tracts of pine forest, hundreds and

even thousands of acres in extent, have been purchased and felled,

solely to supply timber for this purpose. The United States government

tax, at one cent per hundred, produces $2,000,000 per year, which shows

a manufacture of 20,000,000,000 matches. Allowing nothing for waste,

there are about fifty matches to the cubic inch of wood, or 86,400 to

the cubic foot, making in all upwards of 230,000 cubic feet, and, as

only straight-grained wood, free from knots, can be used for this

purpose, the sacrifice of not less than three or four thousand

well-grown pines is required for this purpose.

If we add to all this the supply of wood for telegraph-posts, wooden

pavements, wooden wall tapestry-paper, shoe-pegs, and even wooden nails,

which have lately come into use--not to speak of numerous other recent

applications of this material which American ingenuity has devised--we

have an amount of consumption, for entirely new purposes, which is

really appalling.

Wooden field and garden fences are very generally used in America, and

some have estimated the consumption of wood for this purpose as not less

than that for architectural uses.

Fully one-half our vast population is lodged in wooden houses, and barns

and country out-houses of all descriptions are almost universally of the

same material.

The consumption of wood in the United States as fuel for domestic

purposes, for charcoal, for brick and lime kilns, for breweries and

distilleries, for steamboats, and many other uses, defies computation,

and is vastly greater than is employed in Europe for the same ends. For

instance, in rural Switzerland, cold as is the winter climate, the whole

supply of wood for domestic fires, dairies, breweries, distilleries,

brick and lime kilns, fences, furniture, tools, and even house-building

and small smitheries, exclusive of the small quantity derived from the

trimmings of fruit-trees, grape-vines, and hedges, and from decayed

fences and buildings, does not exceed TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY CUBIC FEET,

or less than two cords a year, per household.--See Bericht uber die

Untersuchung der Schweiz Hochgebirgswaldungen, pp. 85-89. In 1789,

Arthur Young estimated the annual consumption of firewood by single

families in France at from two and a half to ten Paris cords of 134

cubic feet.--Travels, vol. ii., chap. xv.

The report of the Commissioners on the Forests of Wisconsin, 1867,

allows three cords of wood to each person for household fires alone.

Taking families at an average of five persons, we have eight times the

amount consumed by an equal number of persons in Switzerland for this

and all other purposes to which this material in ordinarily applicable.

I do not think the consumption in the North-eastern States is at all

less than the calculation for Wisconsin. Evergreen trees are often

destroyed in immense numbers in the United States for the purpose of

decoration of churches and on other festive occasions. The New York city

papers reported that 113,000 young evergreen trees, besides 20,000 yards

of small branches twirled into festoons, were sold in the markets of

that city, for this use, at Christmas, in 1869. At the Cincinnati

Industrial Exhibition of 1873, three miles of evergreen festoons were

hung upon the beams and rafters of the "Floral Hall."

Important statistics on the consumption and supply of wood in the United

States will be found in a valuable paper by the Rev. Frederick Starr,

Jr., in the Transactions of the Agricultural Society for--.

Of course, there is a vast consumption of ligneous material for all

these uses in Europe, but it is greatly less than at earlier periods.

The waste of wood in European carpentry was formerly enormous, the beams

of houses being both larger and more numerous than permanence or

stability required. In examining the construction of the houses occupied

by the eighty families which inhabit the village of Faucigny, in Savoy,

in 1854, the forest inspector found that FIFTY THOUSAND trees had been

employed in building them. The builders "seemed," says Hudry-Menos, "to

have tried to solve the problem of piling upon the walls the largest

quantity of timber possible without crushing them."--Revue des Deux

Mondes, 1st June, 1864, p. 601.

European statistics present comparatively few facts on this subject, of

special interest to American readers, but it is worth noting that France

employs 1,500,000 cubic feet of oak per year for brandy and wine casks,

which is about half her annual consumption of that material; and it is

not a wholly insignificant fact that, according to Rentzach, the

quantity of wood used in parts of Germany for small carvings and for

children's toys is so largs, that the export of such objects from the

town of Sonneberg alone, amounted, in 1853, to 60,000 centner, or three

thousand tons' weight.--Der Wald, p. 68.

In an article in the Revue des Eaux et Forets for November, 1868, it is

stated that 200,000 dozens of drums for boys aro manufactured per month

in Paris. This is equivalent to 28,800,000 per year, for which

56,000,000 drumsticks are required, and the writer supposes that the

annual growth of 50,000 acres of woodland would not more than supply the

material. In the same article the consumption of matches in France is

given at 7,200,000,000, and the quantity of lumber annually required for

this manufacture is computed at 80,000 steres, or cubic

metres--evidently an erroneous calculation.] and but for improvements in

metallurgy and the working of iron, which have facilitated the

substitution of that metal for wood, the last twenty-five years would

have almost stripped Europe of her last remaining tree fit for these

uses. [Footnote: Besides the substitution of iron for wood, a great

saving of consumption of this latter material has been effected by the

revival of ancient methods of increasing its durability, and the

invention of new processes for the same purpose. The most effectual

preservative yet discovered for wood employed on land, is sulphate of

copper, a solution of which is introduced into the pores of the wood

while green, by soaking, by forcing-pumps, or, most economically, by the

simple pressure of a column of the fluid in a small pipe connected with

the end of the piece of timber subjected to the treatment. Clave (Etudes

Forestieres, pp. 240-249) gives an interesting account of the various

processes employed for rendering wood imperishable, and states that

railroad-ties injected with sulphate of copper in 1846, were found

absolutely unaltered in 1855; and telegraphic posts prepared two years

earlier, are now in a state of perfect preservation.

For many purposes, the method of injection is too expensive, and some

simpler process is much to be desired. The question of the proper time

of felling timber is not settled, and the best modes of air, water, and

steam seasoning are not yet fully ascertained. Experiments on these

subjects would be well worth the patronage of Governments in new

countries, where they can be very easily made, without the necessity of

much waste of valuable material, and without expensive arrangements for

observation.

The practice of stripping living trees of their bark some years before

they are felled, is as old as the time of Vitruvius, but is much less

followed than it deserves, partly because the timber of trees so treated

inclines to crack and split, and partly because it becomes so hard as to

be wrought with considerable difficulty.

In America, economy in the consumption of fuel has been much promoted by

the substitution of coal for wood, the general use of stoves both for

wood and coal, and recently by the employment of anthracite in the

furnaces of stationary and locomotive steam-engines. All the objections

to the use of anthracite for this latter purpose appear to have been

overcome, and the improvements in its combustion have been attended with

a great pecuniary saving, and with much advantage to the preservation of

the woods.

The employment of coal has produced a great reduction in the consumption

of firewood in Paris. In 1815, the supply of firewood for the city

required 1,200,000 steres, or cubic metres; in 1859 it had fallen to

501,805, while, in the meantime, the consumption of coal had risen from

600,000 to 4,320,000 metrical quintals. See Clave, Etudes, p. 212.

In 1869 Paris consumed 951,157 steres of firewood, 4,902,414

hectolitres, or more than 13,000,000 bushels, of charcoal, and 6,872,000

metrical quintals, or more than 7,000,000 tons of mineral

coal.--Annuaire de la Revue des Eaux et Forets for 1872, p. 26.

The increase in the price of firewood at Paris, within a century, has

been comparatively small, while that of timber and of sawed lumber has

increased enormously.] I have spoken of the foreign demand for American

agricultural products as having occasioned an extension of cultivated

ground, which had led to clearing land not required by the necessities

of home consumption. But the forest itself has become, so to speak, an

article of exportation. England, as we have seen, imported oak and pine

from the Baltic ports more than six hundred years ago. She has since

drawn largely on the forests of Norway, and for many years has received

vast quantities of lumber from her American possessions.

The unparalleled facilities for internal navigation, afforded by the

numerous rivers of the present and former British colonial possessions

in North America, have proved very fatal to the forests of that

continent. Quebec became many years ago a centre for a lumber trade,

which, in the bulk of its material, and, consequently, in the tonnage

required for its transportation, rivalled the commerce of the greatest

European cities. Immense rafts were collected at Quebec from the great

Lakes, from the Ottawa, and from all the other tributaries which unite

to swell the current of the St. Lawrence and help it to struggle against

its mighty tides. [Footnote: The tide rises at Quebec to the height of

twenty-five feet, and when it is aided by a north-east wind, it flows

with almost irresistible violence. Rafts containing several hundred

thousand cubic feet of timber are often caught by the flood-tide, torn

to pieces, and dispersed for miles along the shores.] Ships, of burden

formerly undreamed of, have been built to convey the timber to the

markets of Europe, and during the summer months the St. Lawrence is

almost as crowded with shipping as the Thames. [Footnote: One of these,

the Baron of Renfrew--so named from one of the titles of the kings of

England--built forty or fifty years ago, measured 5,000 tons. They were

little else than rafts, being almost solid masses of timber designed to

be taken to pieces and sold as lumber on arriving at their port of

destination.

The lumber trade at Quebec is still very large. According to an article

in the Revue des Deux Mondes, that city exported, in 1860, 30,000,000

cubic feet of squared timber, and 400,000,000 square feet of "planches."

The thickness of the boards is not stated, but I believe they are

generally cut an inch and a quarter thick for the Quebec trade, and as

they shrink somewhat in drying, we may estimate ten square for one cubic

foot of boards. This gives a total of 70,000,000 cubic feet. The

specific gravity of white pine is .554, and the weight of this quantity

of lumber, very little of which is thoroughly seasoned, would exceed a

million of tons, even supposing it to consist wholly of wood as light as

pine.

The London Times of Oct. 10, 1871, states the exportation of lumber from

Canada to Europe, in 1870, at 200,000,000 cubic feet, and adds that more

than three times that quantity was sent from the same province to the

United States. A very large proportion of this latter quantity goes to

Burlington, Vermont, whence it is distributed to other parts of the

Union.

There must, I think, be some error or exaggeration in these figures.

Perhaps instead of cubic feet we should read square feet. Two hundred

millions of cubic feet of timber would require more than half the entire

tonnage of England for its transportation.

I suppose the quantities in the following estimates, from a carefully

prepared article in the St. Louis Republican, must be understood as

meaning square or superficial feet, board measure, allowing a thickness

of one inch:

"The lumber trade of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, for the year

1869, shows the amount cut as being 2,029,372,255 feet for the State of

Michigan, and 317,400,000 feet for the State of Minnesota, and

964,600,000 feet for the State of Wisconsin. This includes the lake

shore and the whole State of Wisconsin, which heretofore has been

difficult to get a report from. The total amount cut in these States was

3,311,372,255 feet, and that to obtain this quantity there have been

shipped 883,032 acres, or 1,380 square miles of pine have been removed.

It is calculated that 4,000,000 acres of land still remain unstripped in

Michigan, which will yield 15,000,000,000 feet of lumber; while

3,000,000 acres arc still standing in Wisconsin, which will yield

11,250,000,000 feet, and that which remains in Minnesota, taking the

estimate of a few years since of that which was surveyed and unexplored,

after deducting the amount cut the past few years, we find 3,630,000

acres to be the proper estimate of trees now standing which will yield

32,362,500,000 feet of lumber. This makes a total of 15,630,000 acres of

pine lands, which remain standing in the above States, that will yield

58,612,500,000 feet of lumber, and it is thought that fifteen or twenty

years will be required to cut and send to market the trees now

standing."

See also Bryant, Forest Trees, chap. iv.]

Effects of Forest Fires.

The operations of the lumberman involve other dangers to the woods

besides the loss of the trees felled by him. The narrow clearings around

his shanties form openings which let in the wind, and thus sometimes

occasion the overthrow of thousands of trees, the fall of which dams up

small streams, and creates bogs by the spreading of the waters, while

the decaying trunks facilitate the multiplication of the insects which

breed in dead wood and are, some of them, injurious to living trees. The

escape and spread of camp-fires, however, is the most devastating of all

the causes of destruction that find their origin in the operations of

the lumberman. The proportion of trees fit for industrial uses is small

in all primitive woods. Only these fall before the forester's axe, but

the fire destroys, almost indiscriminately, every age and every species

of tree. [Footnote: Trees differ in their power of resisting the action

of forest fires. Different woods vary greatly in combustibility, and

even when the bark is scarcely scorched, trees are, partly in

consequence of physiological character, and partly from the greater or

less depth at which their roots habitually lie below the surface,

differently affected by running fires. The white pine, Pinus strobus, as

it is the most valuable, is also perhaps the most delicate tree of the

American forest, while its congener, the Northern pitch-pine, Pinus

rigida, is less injured by fire than any other tree of that country. I

have heard experienced lumbermen maintain that the growth of this pine

was even accelerated by a fire brisk enough to destroy all other trees,

and I have myself seen it still flourishing after a conflagration which

had left not a green leaf but its own in the wood, and actually throwing

out fresh foliage, when the old had been quite burnt off and the bark

almost converted into charcoal. The wood of the pitch-pine is of

comparatively little value for the joiner, but it is useful for very

many purposes. Its rapidity of growth in even poor soils, its hardihood,

and its abundant yield of resinous products, entitle it to much more

consideration, as a plantation tree, than it has hitherto received in

Europe or America.]

While, then, without fatal injury to the younger growths, the native

forest will bear several "cuttings over" in a generation--for the

increasing value of lumber brings into use, every four or five years, a

quality of timber which had been before rejected as unmarketable--a fire

may render the declivity of a mountain unproductive for a century.

[Footnote: Between sixty and seventy years ago, a steep mountain with

which I am familiar, composed of metamorphic rock, and at that time

covered with a thick coating of soil and a dense primeval forest, was

accidentally burnt over. The fire took place in a very dry season, the

slope of the mountain was too rapid to retain much water, and the

conflagration was of an extraordinarily fierce character, consuming the

wood almost entirely, burning the leaves and combustible portion of the

mould, and in the many places cracking and disintegrating the rock

beneath. The rains of the following autumn carried off much of the

remaining soil, and the mountain-side was nearly bare of wood for two or

three years afterwards. At length a new crop of trees sprang up and grew

vigorously, and the mountain is now thickly covered again. But the depth

of mould and earth is too small to allow the trees to reach maturity.

When they attain to the diameter of about six inches, they uniformly

die, and this they will no doubt continue to do until the decay of

leaves and wood on the surface, and the decomposition of the subjacent

rock, shall have formed, perhaps hundreds of years hence, a stratum of

soil thick enough to support a full-grown forest. Under favorable

conditions, however, as in the case of the fire of Miramichi, a burnt

forest renews itself rapidly and permanently.]

Aside from the destruction of the trees and the laying bare of the soil,

and consequently the freer admission of sun, rain, and air to the

ground, the fire of itself exerts an important influence on its texture

and condition. It cracks and sometimes even pulverizes the rocks and

stones upon and near the surface; [Footnote: In the burning over of a

hill-forest in the Lower Engadine, in September, 1865, the fire was

intense as to shatter and calcine the rocks on the slope, and their

fragments were precipitated into the valley below.--Ricista Firrestate

del Regna d'Italia, Ottobro, 1865, 1865, p. 474.] it consumes a portion

of the half-decayed vegetable mould which served to hold its mineral

particles together and to retain the water of precipitation, and thus

loosens, pulverizes, and dries the earth; it destroys reptiles, insects,

and worms, with their eggs, and the seeds of trees and of smaller

plants; it supplies, in the ashes which it deposits on the surface,

important elements for the growth of a new forest clothing, as well as

of the usual objects of agricultural industry; and by the changes thus

produced, it fits the ground for the reception of a vegetation different

in character from that which had spontaneously covered it. These new

conditions help to explain the natural succession of forest crops, so

generally observed in all woods cleared by fire and then abandoned.

There is no doubt, however, that other influences contribute to the same

result, because effects more or less analogous follow when the trees are

destroyed by other causes, as by high winds, by the woodman's axe, and

even by natural decay. [Footnote: The remarkable mounds and other

earthworks constructed in the valley of the Ohio and elsewhere in the

territory of the United States, by a people apparently more advanced in

the culture than the modern Indian, were overgrown with a dense clothing

of forest when first discovered by the whites. But though the ground

where they were erected must have been occupied by a large population

for a considerable leagth of time, and therefore entirely cleared, the

trees which grew upon the ancient fortresses and the adjacent lands were

not distinguishable in species, or even in dimensions and character of

growth, from the neighboring forests, where the soil seemed never to

have been disturbed. This apparent exception to the law of change of

crop in natured forest growth was ingeniously explained by General

Harrison's suggestion, that the lapse of time since the era of the

mound-builders was so great as to have embraced several successive

generations of trees, and occasioned, by their rotation, a return to the

original vegetation.

The succesive changes in the spontaneous growth of the forest, as proved

by the character of the wood found in bogs, are such as to have

suggested the theory of a considerable change of climate during the

human period. But strobus, as it is the most valuable, is also perhaps

the most delicate tree of the American forest, while its congener, the

Northern pitch-pine, Pinus rigida, is less injured by fire than any

other tree of that country. I have heard experienced lumbermen maintain

that the growth of this pine was even accelerated by a fire brisk enough

to destroy all other trees, and I have myself seen it still flourishing

after a conflagration which had left not a green leaf but its own in the

wood, and actually throwing out fresh foliage, when the old had been

quite burnt off and the bark almost converted into charcoal. The wood of

the pitch-pine is of comparatively little value for the joiner, but it

is useful for very many purposes. Its rapidity of growth in even poor

soils, its hardihood, and its abundant yield of resinous products,

entitle it to much more consideration, as a plantation tree, than it has

hitherto received in Europe or America.] without fatal injury to the

younger growths, the native forest will hear several "cuttings over" in

a generation--for the increasing value of lumber brings into use, every

four or five years, a quality of timber which had been before rejected

as unmarketable--a fire may render the declivity of a mountain

unproductive for a century. [Footnote: Between sixty and seventy years

ago, a steep mountain with which I am familiar, composed of metamorphic

rock, and at that time covered with a thick coating of soil and a dense

primeval forest, was accidentally burnt over. The fire took place in a

very dry season, the slope of the mountain was too rapid to retain much

water, and the conflagration was of an extraordinarily fierce character,

consuming the wood almost entirely, burning the leaves and combustible

portion of the mould, and in many places cracking and disintegrating the

rock beneath. The rains of the following autumn carried off much of the