The Project Gutenberg eBook of Man and Nature, by George P. Marsh.

[244] One of these, the Baron of Renfrew—so named from one of the titles of the kings of England—built thirty or forty 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 a recent 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. New Brunswick, too, exports a large amount of lumber.

[245] This name, from the French chantier, which has a wider meaning, is applied in America to temporary huts or habitations erected for the convenience of forest life, or in connection with works of material improvement.

[246] Trees differ much in their power of resisting the action of forest fires. Different woods vary greatly in combustibility, and even when their bark is scarcely scorched, they are, partly in consequence of physiological character, and partly from the greater or less depth at which their roots habitually lie below the surface, very 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.

[247] Between fifty and sixty years ago, a steep mountain with which I am very 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 remaining soil, and the mountain side was nearly bare of wood for two or three years afterward. 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.

[248] The growth of the white pine, on a good soil and in open ground, is rather rapid until it reaches the diameter of a couple of feet, after which it is much slower. The favorite habitat of this tree is light sandy earth. On this soil, and in a dense wood, it requires a century to attain the diameter of a yard. Emerson (Trees of Massachusetts, p. 65), says that a pine of this species, near Paris, "thirty years planted, is eighty feet high, with a diameter of three feet." He also states that ten white pines planted at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809 or 1810, exhibited, in the winter of 1841 and 1842, an average of twenty inches diameter at the ground, the two largest measuring, at the height of three feet, four feet eight inches in circumference; and he mentions another pine growing in a rocky swamp, which, at the age of thirty-two years, "gave seven feet in circumference at the but, with a height of sixty-two feet six inches." This latter I suppose to be a seedling, the others transplanted trees, which might have been some years old when placed where they finally grew.

The following case came under my own observation: In 1824, a pine tree, so small that a young lady, with the help of a lad, took it up from the ground and carried it a quarter of a mile, was planted near a house in a town in Vermont. It was occasionally watered, but received no other special treatment. I measured this tree in 1860, and found it, at four feet from the ground, and entirely above the spread of the roots, two feet and four inches in diameter. It could not have been more than three inches through when transplanted, and must have increased its diameter twenty-five inches in thirty-six years.

[249] Williams, History of Vermont, ii, p. 53. Dwight's Travels, iv, p. 21, and iii, p. 36. Emerson, Trees of Massachusetts, p. 61. Parish, Life of President Wheelock, p. 56.

[250] The forest trees of the Northern States do not attain to extreme longevity in the dense woods. Dr. Williams found that none of the huge pines, the age of which he ascertained, exceeded three hundred and fifty or four hundred years, though he quotes a friend who thought he had noticed trees considerably older. The oak lives longer than the pine, and the hemlock spruce is perhaps equally long lived. A tree of this latter species, cut within my knowledge in a thick wood, counted four hundred and eighty-six, or, according to another observer, five hundred annual circles.

Great luxuriance of animal and vegetable production is not commonly accompanied by long duration of the individual. The oldest men are not found in the crowded city; and in the tropics, where life is prolific and precocious, it is also short. The most ancient forest trees of which we have accounts have not been those growing in thick woods, but isolated specimens, with no taller neighbor to intercept the light and heat and air, and no rival to share the nutriment afforded by the soil.

The more rapid growth and greater dimensions of trees standing near the boundary of the forest, are matters of familiar observation. "Long experience has shown that trees growing on the confines of the wood may be cut at sixty years of age as advantageously as others of the same species, reared in the depth of the forest, at a hundred and twenty. We have often remarked, in our Alps, that the trunk of trees upon the border of a grove is most developed or enlarged upon the outer or open side, where the branches extend themselves farthest, while the concentric circles of growth are most uniform in those entirely surrounded by other trees, or standing entirely alone."—A. and G. Villa, Necessità dei Boschi, pp. 17, 18.

[251] Caimi states that "a single flotation in the Valtelline in 1839, caused damages alleged to amount to more than $800,000, and actually appraised at $250,000."—Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi, p. 65.

[252] Most physicists who have investigated the laws of natural hydraulics maintain that, in consequence of direct obstruction and frictional resistance to the flow of the water of rivers along their banks, there is both an increased rapidity of current and an elevation of the water in the middle of the channel, so that a river presents always a convex surface. The lumbermen deny this. They affirm that, while rivers are rising, the water is highest in the middle of the channel, and tends to throw floating objects shoreward; while they are falling, it is lowest in the middle, and floating objects incline toward the centre. Logs, they say, rolled into the water during the rise, are very apt to lodge on the banks, while those set afloat during the falling of the waters keep in the current, and are carried without hindrance to their destination.

Foresters and lumbermen, like sailors and other persons whose daily occupations bring them into contact, and often, into conflict, with great natural forces, have many peculiar opinions, not to say superstitions. In one of these categories we must rank the universal belief of lumbermen, that with a given head of water, and in a given number of hours, a sawmill cuts more lumber by night than by day. Having been personally interested in several sawmills, I have frequently conversed with sawyers on this subject, and have always been assured by them that their uniform experience established the fact that, other things being equal, the action of the machinery of sawmills is more rapid by night than by day. I am sorry—perhaps I ought to be ashamed—to say that my scepticism has been too strong to allow me to avail myself of my opportunities of testing this question by passing a night, watch in hand, counting the strokes of a millsaw. More unprejudiced, and I must add, very intelligent and credible persons have informed me that they have done so, and found the report of the sawyers abundantly confirmed. A land surveyor, who was also an experienced lumberman, sawyer, and machinist, a good mathematician and an exact observer, has repeatedly told me, that he had very often "timed" sawmills, and found the difference in favor of night work above thirty per cent. Sed quære.

[253] For many instances of this sort, see 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 kept of the numbers of each species of tree, the document is of interest in the history of the forest, as showing the relative proportions between the different trees which composed the wood. See Vaupell. Bögens Indvandring, p. 35, and Notes, p. 55.

[254] Since writing this paragraph, I have fallen upon—and that in a Spanish author—one of those odd coincidences of thought which every man of miscellaneous reading so often meets with. Antonio Ponz (Viage de España, i, prólogo, p. lxiii), says: "Nor would this be so great an evil, were not some of them declaimers against trees, thereby proclaiming themselves, in some sort, enemies of the works of God, who gave us the leafy abode of Paradise to dwell in, where we should be even now sojourning, but for the first sin, which expelled us from it."

I do not know at what period the two Castiles were bared of their woods, but the Spaniard's proverbial "hatred of a tree" is of long standing. Herrera vigorously combats this foolish prejudice; and Ponz, in the prologue to the ninth volume of his journey, says that many carried it so far as wantonly to destroy the shade and ornamental trees planted by the municipal authorities. "Trees," they contended, and still believe, "breed birds, and birds eat up the grain." Our author argues against the supposition of the "breeding of birds by trees," which, he says, is as absurd as to believe that an elm tree can yield pears; and he charitably suggests that the expression is, perhaps, a manière de dire, a popular phrase, signifying simply that trees harbor birds.

[255] 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.

[256] 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.

[257] Histoire des Paysans, ii, p. 190. The work of Bonnemère is of great value to those who study the history of mediæval 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. Bonnemère 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.

[258] 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.

[259] Guillaume de Nangis, as quoted in the notes to Joinville, Nouvelle Collection des Mémoires, etc., par Michaud et Poujoulat, première série, i, p. 335.

Persons acquainted with the character and influence of the mediæval 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."

[260] Histoire des Paysans, ii, p. 200.

[261] The following details from Bonnemère 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 Clavé, "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," &c.—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.

[262] "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 Clavé, Études, 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.

[263] "A hundred and fifty paces from my house is a hill of drift sand, on which stood a few scattered pines. Pinus sylvestris, and Sempervivum tectorum in abundance, Statice armeria, Ammone vernalis, Dianthus carthusianorum, with other sand plants, were growing there. I planted the hill with a few birches, and all the plants I have mentioned completely disappeared, though there were many naked spots of sand between the trees. It should be added, however, that the hillock is more thickly wooded than before. * * * It seems then that Sempervivum tectorum, &c., will not bear the neighborhood of the birch, though growing well near the Pinus sylvestris. I have found the large red variety of Agaricus deliciosus only among the roots of the pine; the greenish-blue Agaricus deliciosus among alder roots, but not near any other tree. Birds have their partialities among trees and shrubs. The Silviæ prefer the Pinus Larix to other trees. In my garden this Pinus is never without them, but I never saw a bird perch on Thuja occidenialis or Juniperus sabina, although the thick foliage of these latter trees affords birds a better shelter than the loose leafage of other trees. Not even a wren ever finds its way to one of them. Perhaps the scent of the Thuja and the Juniperus is offensive to them. I have spoiled one of my meadows by cutting away the bushes. It formerly bore grass four feet high, because many umbelliferous plants, such as Heracleum spondylium, Spiræa ulmaria, Laserpitium latifolia, &c., grew in it. Under the shelter of the bushes these plants ripened and bore seed, but they gradually disappeared as the shrubs were extirpated, and the grass now does not grow to the height of more than two feet, because it is no longer obliged to keep pace with the umbellifera which flourished among it." See a paper by J. G. Büttner, of Kurland, in Berghaus' Geographisches Jahrbuch, 1852, No. 4, pp. 14, 15.

These facts are interesting as illustrating the multitude of often obscure conditions upon which the life or vigorous growth of smaller organisms depends. Particular species of truffles and of mushrooms are found associated with particular trees, without being, as is popularly supposed, parasites deriving their nutriment from the dying or dead roots of those trees. The success of Rousseau's experiments seem decisive on this point, for he obtains larger crops of truffles from ground covered with young seedling oaks than from that filled with roots of old trees. See an article on Mont Ventoux, by Charles Martins, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Avril, 1863, p. 626.

It ought to be much more generally known than it is that most, if not, all mushrooms, even of the species reputed poisonous, may be rendered harmless and healthful as food by soaking them for two hours in acidulated or salt water. The water requires two or three spoonfuls of vinegar or two spoonfuls of gray salt to the quart, and a quart of water is enough for a pound of sliced mushrooms. After thus soaking, they are well washed in fresh water, thrown into cold water, which is raised to the boiling point, and, after remaining half an hour, taken out and again washed. Gérard, to prove that "crumpets is wholesome," ate one hundred and seventy-five pounds of the most poisonous mushrooms thus prepared, in a single month, fed his family ad libitum with the same, and finally administered them, in heroic doses, to the members of a committee appointed by the Council of Health of the city of Paris. See Figuier, L'Année Scientifique, 1862, pp. 353, 384. See Appendix, No. 31.

It has long been known that the Russian peasantry eat, with impunity, mushrooms of species everywhere else regarded as very poisonous. Is it not probable that the secret of rendering them harmless—which was known to Pliny, though since forgotten in Italy—is possessed by the rustic Muscovites?

[264] Physikalische Geographie, p. 486.

[265] Origin of Species, American edition, p. 69.

[266] Writers on vegetable physiology record numerous instances where seeds have grown after lying dormant for ages. The following cases, mentioned by Dr. Dwight (Travels, ii, pp. 438, 439), may be new to many readers:

"The lands [in Panton, Vermont], which have here been once cultivated, and again permitted to lie waste for several years, yield a rich and fine growth of hickory [Carya porcina]. Of this wood there is not, I believe, a single tree in any original forest within fifty miles from this spot. The native growth was here white pine, of which I did not see a single stem in a whole grove of hickory."

The hickory is a walnut, bearing a fruit too heavy to be likely to be carried fifty miles by birds, and besides, I believe it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to Vermont.

"A field, about five miles from Northampton, on an eminence called Rail Hill, was cultivated about a century ago. The native growth here, and in all the surrounding region, was wholly oak, chestnut, &c. As the field belonged to my grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this ground there sprang up a grove of white pines covering the field and retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a single oak or chestnut tree. * * * There was not a single pine whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to have been planted on this spot. The fact that these white pines covered this field exactly, so as to preserve both its extent and its figure, and that there were none in the neighborhood, are decisive proofs that cultivation brought up the seeds of a former forest within the limits of vegetation, and gave them an opportunity to germinate."

[267] Quaint old Valvasor had observed the subduing influence of nature's solitudes. In describing the lonely Canker-Thal, which, though rocky, was in his time well wooded with "fir, larches, beeches, and other trees," he says: "Gladsomeness and beauty, which dwell in many valleys, may not be looked for there. The journey through it is cheerless, melancholy, wearisome, and serveth to temper and mortify over-joyousness of thought. * * * In sum it is a very wild, wherein the wildness of human pride doth grow tame."—Ehre der Crain, i, p. 136, b.

[268] Valvasor says, in the same paragraph from which I have just quoted, "In my many journeys through this valley, I did never have sight of so much as a single bird."

[269] Smela, in the government of Kiew, has, for some years, not suffered at all from the locusts, which formerly came every year in vast swarms, and the curculio, so injurious to the turnip crops, is less destructive there than in other parts of the province. This improvement is owing partly to the more thorough cultivation of the soil, partly to the groves which are interspersed among the plough lands. * * * When in the midst of the plains woods shall be planted and filled with insectivorous birds, the locusts will cease to be a plague and a terror to the farmer.—Rentzsch, Der Wald, pp. 45, 46.

[270] England is, I believe, the only country where private enterprise has pursued sylviculture on a really great scale, though admirable examples have been set in many others on both sides of the Atlantic. In England the law of primogeniture, and other institutions and national customs which tend to keep large estates long undivided and in the same line of inheritance, the wealth of the landholders, and the difficulty of finding safe and profitable investments of capital, combine to afford encouragements for the plantation of forests, which nowhere else exist in the same degree. The climate of England, too, is very favorable to the growth of forest trees, though the character of surface secures a large part of the island from the evils which have resulted from the destruction of the woods elsewhere, and therefore their restoration is a matter of less geographical importance in England than on the Continent.

[271] The preservation of the woods on the eastern frontier of France, as a kind of natural abattis, is also recognized by the Government of that country as an important measure of military defence, though there have been conflicting opinions on the subject.

[272] Let us take the supply of timber for railroad ties. According to Clavé (p. 248), France has 9,000 kilomètres of railway in operation, 7,000 in construction, half of which is built with a double track. Adding turnouts and extra tracks at stations, the number of ties required for a single track is stated at 1,200 to the kilomètre, or, as Clavé computes, for the entire network of France, 58,000,000. As the schoolboys say, "this sum does not prove;" for 16,000 + 8,000 for the double track halfway = 24,000, and 24,000 × 1,200 = 28,800,000. According to Bigelow (Les États Unis en 1863, p. 439), the United States had in operation or construction on the first of January, 1862, 51,000 miles, or about 81,000 kilomètres of railroad, and the military operations of the present civil war are rapidly extending the system. Allowing the same proportion as in France, the American railroads required 97,200,000 ties in 1862. The consumption of timber in Europe and America during the present generation, occasioned by this demand, has required the sacrifice of many hundred thousand acres of forest, and if we add the quantity employed for telegraph posts, we have an amount of destruction, for entirely new purposes, which is really appalling.

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 demand for wood for small carvings and for children's toys is incredibly large. Rentzsch states the export of such objects from the town of Sonneberg alone to have amounted, in 1853, to 60,000 centner, or three thousand tons' weight.—Der Wald, p. 68. See Appendix, No. 33.

The importance of so managing the forest that it may continue indefinitely to furnish an adequate supply of material for naval architecture is well illustrated by some remarks of the same author in the valuable little work just cited. He suggests that the prosperity of modern England is due, in no small degree, to the supplies of wood and other material for building and equipping ships, received from the forests of her colonies and of other countries with which she has maintained close commercial relations, and he adds: "Spain, which by her position seemed destined for universal power, and once, in fact, possessed it, has lost her political rank, because during the unwise administration of the successors of Philip II, the empty exchequer could not furnish the means of building new fleets; for the destruction of the forests had raised the price of timber above the resources of the state."—Der Wald, p. 63.

The market price of timber, like that of all other commodities, may be said, in a general way, to be regulated by the laws of demand and supply, but it is also controlled by those seemingly unrelated accidents which so often disappoint the calculations of political economists in other branches of commerce. A curious case of this sort is noticed by Cerini, Dell' Impianto e Conservazione dei Boschi, p. 17: "In the mountains on the Lago Maggiore, in years when maize is cheap, the woodcutters can provide themselves with corn meal enough for a week by three days' labor, and they refuse to work the remaining four. Hence the dealers in wood, not being able to supply the demand, for want of laborers, are obliged to raise the price for the following season, both for timber and for firewood; so that a low price of grain occasions a high price of building lumber and of fuel. The consequence is, that though the poor have supplied themselves cheaply with food, they must pay dear for firewood, and they cannot get work, because the high price of lumber has discouraged repairs and building, the expense of which landed proprietors cannot undertake when their incomes have been reduced by sales of grain at low rates, and hence there is not demand enough for lumber to induce the timber merchants to furnish employment to the woodmen."

[273] 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. Clavé (Études Forestières, 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 fire wood in Paris. In 1815, the supply of fire wood for the city required 1,200,000 stères, or cubic mètres; in 1859, it had fallen to 501,805, while, in the mean time, the consumption of coal had risen from 600,000 to 432,000,000 metrical quintals. See Clavé, Études, p. 212.

I think there must be some error in this last sum, as 432 millions of metrical quintals would amount to 43 millions of tons, a quantity which it is difficult to suppose could be consumed in the city of Paris. The price of fire wood has scarcely advanced at all in Paris for half a century, though that of timber generally has risen enormously.

[274] In the first two years of the present civil war in the United States, twenty-eight thousand walnut trees were felled to supply a single European manufactory of gunstocks for the American market.

[275] Among the indirect proofs of the comparatively recent existence of extensive forests in France, may be mentioned the fact, that wolves were abundant, not very long since, in parts of the empire where there are now neither wolves nor woods to shelter them. Arthur Young more than once speaks of the "innumerable multitudes" of these animals which infested France in 1789, and George Sand states, in the Histoire de ma Vie, that some years after the restoration of the Bourbons, they chased travellers on horseback in the Southern provinces, and literally knocked at the doors of her father-in-law's country seat.

[276] In the Recepte Véritable, Palissy having expressed his indignation at the folly of men in destroying the woods, his interlocutor defends the policy of felling them, by citing the example of "divers bishops, cardinals, priors, abbots, monkeries, and chapters, which, by cutting their woods, have made three profits," the sale of the timber, the rent of the ground, and the "good portion" they received of the grain grown by the peasants upon it. To this argument, Palissy replies: "I cannot enough detest this thing, and I call it not an error, but a curse and a calamity to all France; for when forests shall be cut, all arts shall cease, and they which practise them shall be driven out to eat grass with Nebuchadnezzar and the beasts of the field. I have divers times thought to set down in writing the arts which shall perish when there shall be no more wood; but when I had written down a great number, I did perceive that there could be no end of my writing, and having diligently considered, I found there was not any which could be followed without wood." * * "And truly I could well allege to thee a thousand reasons, but 'tis so cheap a philosophy, that the very chamber wenches, if they do but think, may see that without wood, it is not possible to exercise any manner of human art or cunning."—Œuvres de Bernard Palissy, p. 89.

[277] Since writing the above paragraph, I have found the view I have taken of this point confirmed by the careful investigations of Rentzsch, who estimates the proper proportion of woodland to entire surface at twenty-three per cent. for the interior of Germany, and supposes that near the coast, where the air is supplied with humidity by evaporation from the sea, it might safely be reduced to twenty per cent. See Rentzsch's very valuable prize essay, Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der Volkswirthschaft, cap. viii.

The due proportion in France would considerably exceed that for the German States, because France has relatively more surface unfit for any growth but that of wood, because the form and geological character of her mountains expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents, and because at least her southern provinces are more frequently visited both by extreme drought and by deluging rains.

[278] Études sur l'Économie Forestière, p. 261. Clavé adds (p. 262): "The Russian forests are very unequally distributed through the territory of this vast empire. In the north they form immense masses, and cover whole provinces, while in the south they are so completely wanting that the inhabitants have no other fuel than straw, dung, rushes, and heath." * * * "At Moscow, firewood costs thirty per cent. more than at Paris, while, at the distance of a few leagues, it sells for a tenth of that price."

This state of things is partly due to the want of facilities of transportation, and some parts of the United States are in a similar condition. During a severe winter, six or seven years ago, the sudden freezing of the canals and rivers, before a large American town had received its usual supply of fuel, occasioned an enormous rise in the price of wood and coal, and the poor suffered severely for want of it. Within a few hours of the city were large forests and an abundant stock of firewood felled and prepared for burning. This might easily have been carried to town by the railroads which passed through the woods; but the managers of the roads refused to receive it as freight, because the opening of a new market for wood might raise the price of the fuel they employed for their locomotives.

Hohenstein, who was long professionally employed as a forester in Russia, describes the consequences of the general war upon the woods in that country as already most disastrous, and as threatening still more ruinous evils. The river Volga, the life artery of Russian internal commerce, is drying up from this cause, and the great Muscovite plains are fast advancing to a desolation like that of Persia.—Der Wald, p. 223.

The level of the Caspian Sea is eighty-three feet lower than that of the Sea of Azoff, and the surface of Lake Aral is fast sinking. Von Baer maintains that the depression of the Caspian was produced by a sudden subsidence, from geological causes, and not gradually by excess of evaporation over supply. See Kaspische Studien, p. 25. But this subsidence diminished the area and consequently the evaporation of that sea, and the rivers which once maintained its ancient equilibrium ought to raise it to its former level, if their own flow had not been diminished. It is, indeed, not proved that the laying bare of a wooded country diminishes the total annual precipitation upon it; but it is certain that the summer evaporation from the surface of a champaign region, like that through which the Volga, its tributaries, and the feeders of Lake Aral flow, is increased by the removal of its woods. Hence, though as much rain may still fall in the valleys of those rivers as when their whole surface was covered with forests, a less quantity of water may be delivered by them since their basins were cleared, and therefore the present condition of the inland waters in question may be due to the removal of the forests in their basins.