The Earth As Modified By Human Action Part 19

The rural population, which in France is generally hostile to all forest laws, soon acquiesced in the adoption of this system, and its success has far surpa.s.sed all expectation. At the end of the year 1868 about 190,000 acres had been planted with trees, [Footnote: Travellers spending the winter at Nice may have a good opportunity of studying the methods of forming and conducting the rewooding of mountain slopes, under the most unfavorable conditions, by visiting Mont Boron, in the immediate vicinity of that city, and other coast plantations in that province, where great difficulties have been completely overcome by the skill and perseverance of French foresters. See Les Forets des Maures, Revue des Eaux et Forets, January, 1869.] and nearly 7,000 acres well turfed over in the Department of the Hautes Alpes. Many hundred ravines, several of which had been the channels of formidable torrents, had been secured by barriers, grading and planting, and according to official reports the aspect of the mountains in the Department, wherever these methods were employed, had rapidly changed. The soil had acquired such stability that the violent rains of 1868, so destructive elsewhere, produced no damage in the districts which had been subjected to these operations, and numerous growing torrents which threatened irreparable mischief had been completely extinguished, or at least rendered altogether harmless. [Footnote: For ample details of processes and results, see the second volume of Surrell, Etudes sur les Torrents, Paris, 1872, and a Report by De La Grye, in the Revue des Eaux et Forets for January, 1869.]

Besides the processes directed by the Government of France, various subsidiary measures of an easily and economically practicable character have been suggested. Among them is one which has long been favorably known in our Southern States under the name of circling, and the adoption of which in hilly regions in other States is to be strongly recommended.

It is simply a method of preventing the wash of surface by rains, and at the same time of providing a subst.i.tute for irrigation of steep pasture-grounds, consisting in little more than in running horizontal furrows along the hillsides, thus converting the scarp of the hills into a succession of small terraces which, when once turfed over, are very permanent. Experience is said to have demonstrated that this simple process at least partially checks the too rapid flow of surface-water into the valleys, and, consequently, in a great measure obviates one of the most prominent causes of inundations, and that it suffices to retain the water of rains, of snows, and of small springs, long enough for the irrigation of the soil, thus increasing its product of herbage in a fivefold proportion. [Footnote: Troy, Etude sur le Rebois.e.m.e.nt des Montagnes, sections 6, 7, 21.]

As a further recommendation, it may be observed that this process is an admirable preparation of the ground for forest plantations, as young trees planted on the terraces would derive a useful protection from the form of the surface and the coating of turf, and would also find a soil moist enough to secure their growth.

Forests of Italy.

According to the most recent statistics, Italy has 17.64 per cent. of woodland, [Footnote: Siemoni, Manuale d'Arte Forestale, 2 ediz., Firenze, 1872, p. 542.] a proportion which, considering the character of climate and surface, the great amount of soil which is fit for no other purpose than the growth of trees, and the fact that much of the land cla.s.sed as forest is either very imperfectly wooded, or covered with groves badly administered, and not in a state of progressive improvement, might advantageously be doubled. Taking Italy as a whole, we may say that she is eminently fitted by climate, soil, and superficial formation, to the growth of a varied and luxuriant arboreal vegetation, and that in the interests of self-protection, the promotion of forestal industry is among the first duties of her people. There are in Western Piedmont valleys where the felling of the woods has produced consequences geographically and economically as disastrous as in South-eastern France, and there are many other districts in the Alps and the Apennines where human improvidence has been almost equally destructive. Some of these regions must be abandoned to absolute desolation, and for others the opportunity of physical restoration is rapidly pa.s.sing away. But there are still millions of square miles which might profitably be planted with forest-trees, and thousands of acres of parched and barren hillside, within sight of almost every Italian provincial capital, which might easily and shortly be reclothed with verdant woods. [Footnote: To one accustomed to the slow vegetation of less favored climes, the rapidity of growth in young plantations in Italy seems almost magical. The trees planted along the new drives and avenues in Florence have attained in three or four years a development which would require at least ten in our Northern States. This, it is true, is a special case, for the trees have been planted and tended with a skill and care which cannot be bestowed upon a forest; but the growth of trees little cared for is still very rapid in Italy. According to Toscanelli, Economia rurale nella Provincia di Pisa, p. 8, note--one of the most complete, curious, and instructive pictures of rural life which exists in any literature--the white poplar, Populus alba, attains in the valley of the Serchio a great height, with a mean diameter of two feet, in twenty years. Solmi states in his Miasma Pal.u.s.tre, p. 115, that the linden reaches a diameter of sixteen inches in the same period. The growth of foreign trees is sometimes extremely luxuriant in Italy. Two Atlas cedars, at the well-known villa of Careggi, near Florence, grown from seed sown in 1850, measure twenty inches in diameter, above the swell of the roots, with an estimated height of sixty feet.]

The denudation of the Central and Southern Apennines and of the Italian declivity of the Western Alps began at a period of unknown antiquity, but it does not seem to have been carried to a very dangerous length until the foreign conquests and extended commerce of Rome created a greatly increased demand for wood for the construction of s.h.i.+ps and for military material. [Footnote: An interesting example of the collateral effects of the destruction of the forests in ancient Italy may be found in old Roman architecture. In the oldest brick constructions of Rome the bricks are very thin, very thoroughly burnt, and laid with a thick stratum of mortar between the courses. A few centuries later the bricks were thicker and less well burnt, and the layers of mortar were thinner.

In the Imperial period the bricks were still thicker, generally soft-burnt, and with little mortar between the courses. This fact, I think, is due to the abundance and cheapness of fuel in earlier, and its growing scarceness and dearness in later, ages. When wood cost little, constructors could afford to burn their brick thoroughly, and to burn and use a great quant.i.ty of lime. As the price of fire-wood advanced, they were able to consume less fuel in brick- and lime-kilns, and the quality and quant.i.ty of brick and lime used in building were gradually reversed in proportion.

The mult.i.tude of geographical designations in Italy which indicate the former existence of forests show that even in the Middle Ages there were woods where no forest-trees are now to be found. There are hundreds of names of mediaeval towns derived from abete, acero, carpino, castagno, f.a.ggio, fra.s.sino, pino, quercia, and other names of trees.] The Eastern Alps, the Western Apennines, and the Maritime Alps retained their forests much later; but even here the want of wood, and the injury to the plains and the nagivation of the rivers by sediment brought down by the torrents, led to legislation for the protection of the forests, by the Republic of Venice, at various periods between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries, [Footnote: See A. de Bereuger's valuable Saggio Storico della Legislazione Veneta Forestale. Venezia, 1863.

We do not find in the Venetian forestal legislation much evidence that geographical arguments were taken into account by the lawgivers, who seem to have had an eye only to economical considerations.

According to Hummel, the desolation of the Karst, the high plateau lying north of Trieste, now one of the most parched and barren districts in Europe, is owing to the felling of the woods, centuries ago, to build the navies of Venice. "Where the miserable peasant of the Karst now sees nothing but bare rock swept and scoured by the raging Bora, the fury of this wind was once subdued by mighty firs, which Venice recklessly cut down to build her fleets."--Physische Geographie, p. 32.] by that of Genoa as early at least as the seventeenth; and both these Governments, as well as several others, pa.s.sed laws requiring the proprietors of mountain-lands to replant the woods. These, however, seem to have been little observed, and it is generally true that the present condition of the forest in Italy is much less due to the want of wise legislation for its protection than to the laxity of the Governments in enforcing their laws.

It is very common in Italy to ascribe to the French occupation under the first Empire all the improvements and all the abuses of recent times, according to the political sympathies of the individual; and the French are often said to have prostrated every forest which has disappeared within this century. But, however this may be, no energetic system of repression or restoration was adopted by any of the Italian States after the downfall of the Empire, and the taxes on forest property in some of them were so burdensome that rural munic.i.p.alities sometimes proposed to cede their common woods to the Government, without any other compensation than the remission of the taxes imposed on forest-lands.

[Footnote: See the Politecnico for the month of May, 1862, p. 234.]

Under such circ.u.mstances, woodlands would soon become disafforested, and where facilities of transportation and a good demand for timber have increased the inducements to fell it, as upon the borders of the Mediterranean, the destruction of the forest and all the evils which attend it have gone on at a seriously alarming rate.

Gallenga gives a striking account of the wanton destruction of the forests in Northern Italy within his personal recollection, [Footnote: "Far away in the darkest recesses of the mountains a kind of universal conspiracy seems to have been got up among these Alpine people,--a destructive mania to hew and sweep down everything that stands on roots."--Country Life in Piedmont, p. 134.

"There are huge pyramids of mountains now bare and bleak from base to summit, which men still living and still young remember seeing richly mantled with all but primeval forests."--Ibid., p. 135.] and there are few Italians past middle life whose own memory will not supply similar reminiscences. The clearing of the mountain valleys of the provinces of Bergamo and of Bescia is recent, and Lombardini informs us the felling of the woods in the Valtelline commenced little more than forty years ago.

Although no country has produced more able writers on the value of the forest and the general consequences of its destruction than Italy, yet the specific geographical importance of the woods, except as a protection against inundations, has not been so clearly recognized in that country as in the States bordering it on the north and west. It is true that the face of nature has been as completely revolutionized by man, and that the action of torrents has created almost as wide and as hopeless devastation in Italy as in France; but in the French Empire the recent desolation produced by clearing the forests is more extensive, has been more suddenly effected, has occurred in less remote and obscure localities, and therefore, excites a livelier and more general interest than in Italy, where public opinion does not so readily connect the effect with its true cause. Italy, too, from ancient habit, employs little wood in architectural construction; for generations she has maintained no military or commercial marine large enough to require exhaustive quant.i.ties of timber, [Footnote: The great naval and commercial marines of Venice and of Genoa must have occasioned an immense consumption of lumber in the Middle Ages, and the centuries immediately succeeding those commonly embraced in that designation. The marine construction of that period employed larger timbers than the modern naval architecture of most commercial countries, but apparently without a proportional increase of strength. The old modes of s.h.i.+p-building have been, to a considerable extent, handed down to very recent times in the Mediterranean, and though better models and modes of construction are now employed in Italian s.h.i.+pyards, an American or an Englishman looks with astonishment at the huge beams and thick planks so often employed in the construction of very small vessels navigating that sea, and not yet old enough to be broken up as unseaworthy.] and the mildness of her climate makes small demands on the woods for fuel.

Besides these circ.u.mstances, it must be remembered that the sciences of observation did not become knowledges of practical application till after the mischief was already mainly done and even forgotten in Alpine Italy, while its evils were just beginning to be sensibly felt in France when the claims of natural philosophy as a liberal study were first acknowledged in modern Europe. The former political condition of the Italian Peninsula would have effectually prevented the adoption of a general system of forest economy, however clearly the importance of a wise administration of this great public interest might have been understood. The woods which controlled and regulated the flow of the river-sources were very often in one jurisdiction, the plains to be irrigated, or to be inundated by floods and desolated by torrents, in another. Concert of action, on such a subject, between a mult.i.tude of jealous petty sovereignties, was obviously impossible, and nothing but the permanent union of all the Italian States under a single government can render practicable the establishment of such arrangements for the conservation and restoration of the forests, and the regulation of the flow of the waters, as are necessary for the full development of the yet unexhausted resources of that fairest of lands, and even for the maintenance of the present condition of its physical geography.

The Forests of Germany.

Germany, including a considerable part of the Austrian Empire, from character of surface and climate, and from the attention which has long been paid in all the German States to sylviculture, is in a far better condition in this respect than its more southern neighbors; and though in the Alpine provinces of Bavaria and Austria the corresponding districts of Switzerland, Italy, and France, has produced effects hardly less disastrous, [Footnote: 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.

In France, the juice of the sugar-beet is sometimes carried three or four miles in pipes for the same reason.

Many of my readers may remember that it was not long ago proposed to manufacture the gas for the supply of London at the mouths of the coal- mines, and convey it to the city in pipes, thus saving the transportation of the coal; but as the c.o.ke and mineral tar would still have remained to be disposed of, the operation would probably not have proved advantageous.

Great economy in the production of petroleum has resulted from the application of cast-iron tubes to the wells instead of barrels; the oil is thus carried over the various inequalities of surface for three or four miles to the tanks on the railroads, and forced into them by steam-engines. The price of transport is thus reduced one-fifth.] yet, as a whole, the German States, as Siemoni well observes, must be considered as in this respect the model countries of Europe. Not only is the forest area in general maintained without diminution, but new woods are planted where they are specially needed, [Footnote: The Austrian Government is making energetic efforts for the propagation of forests on the desolate waste of the Karst. The difficulties from drought and from the violence of the winds, which might prove fatal to young and even to somewhat advanced plantations, are very serious, but in 1866 upwards of 400,000 trees had been planted and great quant.i.ties of seeds sown. Thus far, the results of this important experiment are said to be encouraging. See the Chronique Forestiere in the Revue des Eaux et Forets, Feb. 1870.] and, though the slow growth of forest-trees in those climates reduces the direct pecuniary returns of woodlands to a minimum, the governments wisely persevere in encouraging this industry. The exportation of sawn lumber from Trieste is large, and in fact the Turkish and Egyptian markets are in great part supplied from this source. [Footnote: For information respecting the forests of Germany, as well as other European countries, see, besides the works already cited, the very valuable Manuale d'Arts Forestale of Siemoni, 2de edizione, Firenze, 1872.]

Forests of Russia.

Russia, which we habitually consider as substantially a forest country--which has in fact a large proportion of woodland--is beginning to suffer seriously for want of wood. Jourdier 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." [Footnote: Clave, Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere, p. 261. Clave adds (p. 262): "The Russian forests are very unequally distributed through the territory of this vast empire. In the north they form immense ma.s.ses, 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, ten or twelve years ago, the sudden freezing of the ca.n.a.ls 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 pa.s.sed through the woods; but the managers of the roads refused to receive it as freight, because a rival market for wood might raise the price of the fuel they employed for their locomotives. Truly, our railways "want a master."

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 ecological 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 have raised 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 delivery of water from the surface of a champaign region, like that through which the Volga, its tributaries, and the feeders of Lake Aral, flow, is lessened 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, more moisture may be carried off by evaporation, and a less quant.i.ty of water be discharged by the rivers 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 valleys and the adjacent plains.]

Forests of United States.

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, perhaps, a 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 within the memory of almost every man of mature age, timber was of so little value in the northernmost States that the owners of private woodlands submitted, almost without complaint, to what would be regarded elsewhere as very aggravated trespa.s.ses upon them. [Footnote: According to the maxims of English jurisprudence, the common law consists of general customs so long established that "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." In other words, long custom makes law. In new countries, the change of circ.u.mstances creates new customs, and, in time, new law, without the aid of legislation. Had the American colonists observed a more sparing economy in the treatment of their woods, a new code of customary forest-law would have sprung up and acquired the force of a statute. Popular habit was fast elaborating the fundamental principles of such a code, when the rapid increase in the value of timber, in consequence of the reckless devastation of the woodlands, made it the interest of the proprietors to interfere with this incipient system of forest jurisprudence, and appeal to the rules of English law for the protection of their woods. The courts have sustained these appeals, and forest property is now legally as inviolable as any other, though common opinion still combats the course of judicial decision on such questions.] Persons in want of timber helped themselves to it wherever they could find it, and a claim for damages, for so insignificant a wrong as cutting down and carrying off a few pine or oak trees, was regarded as a mean-spirited act in a proprietor. The habits formed at this period are not altogether obsolete, and even now the notion of a common right of property in the woods still lingers, if not as an opinion at least as a sentiment. Under such circ.u.mstances it has been difficult to protect the forest, whether it belong to the State or to individuals. Property of this kind is subject to plunder, as well as to frequent damage by fire. The destruction from these causes would, indeed, considerably lessen, but would by no means 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.

It is evidently a matter of the utmost importance that the public, and especially land-owners, be roused to a sense of the dangers to which the indiscriminate clearing of the woods may expose not only future generations, but the very soil itself. Some of the American States, as well as the Governments of many European colonies, still retain the owners.h.i.+p of great tracts of primitive woodland. The State of New York, for example, has, in its north-eastern counties, a vast extent of territory in which the lumberman has only here and there established his camp, and where the forest, though interspersed with permanent settlements, robbed of some of its finest pine groves, and often ravaged by devastating fires, still covers far the largest proportion of the surface. Through this territory the soil is generally poor, and even the new clearings have little of the luxuriance of harvest which distinguishes them elsewhere. The value of the land for agricultural uses is therefore very small, and few purchases are made for any other purpose than to strip the soil of its timber. It has been often proposed that the State should declare the remaining forest the inalienable property of the commonwealth, but I believe the motive of the suggestion has originated rather in poetical than in economical views of the subject. Both these cla.s.ses of considerations have a real worth. It is desirable that some large and easily accessible region of American soil should remain, as far as possible, in its primitive condition, at once a museum for the instruction of the student, a garden for the recreation of the lover of nature, and an asylum where indigenous tree, and humble plant that loves the shade, and fish and fowl and four-footed beast, may dwell and perpetuate their kind, in the enjoyment of such imperfect protection as the laws of a people jealous of restraint can afford them.

The immediate loss to the public treasury from the adoption of this policy would be inconsiderable, for these lands are sold at low rates.

The forest alone, economically managed, would, without injury, and even with benefit to its permanence and growth, soon yield a regular income larger than the present value of the fee.

The collateral advantages of the preservation of these forests would be far greater. Nature threw up those mountains and clothed them with lofty woods, that they might serve as a reservoir to supply with perennial waters the thousand rivers and rills that are fed by the rains and snows of the Adirondacks, and as a screen for the fertile plains of the central counties against the chilling blasts of the north wind, which meet no other barrier in their sweep from the Arctic pole. The climate of Northern New York even now presents greater extremes of temperature than that of Southern France. The long-continued cold of winter is more intense, the short heats of summer even fiercer than in Provence, and hence the preservation of every influence that tends to maintain an equilibrium of temperature and humidity is of cardinal importance. The felling of the Adirondack woods would ultimately involve for Northern and Central New York consequences similar to those which have resulted from the laying bare of the southern and western declivities of the French Alps and the spurs, ridges, and detached peaks in front of them.

It is true that the evils to be apprehended from the clearing of the mountains of New York may be less in degree than those which a similar cause has produced in Southern France, where the intensity of its action has been increased by the inclination of the mountain declivities, and by the peculiar geological const.i.tution of the earth. The degradation of the soil is, perhaps, not equally promoted by a combination of the same circ.u.mstances, in any of the American Atlantic States, but still they have rapid slopes and loose and friable soils enough to render widespread desolation certain, if the further destruction of the woods is not soon arrested. The effects of clearing are already perceptible in the comparatively unviolated region of which I am speaking. The rivers which rise in it flow with diminished currents in dry seasons, and with augmented volumes of water after heavy rains. They bring down larger quant.i.ties of sediment, and the increasing obstructions to the navigation of the Hudson, which are extending themselves down the channel in proportion as the fields are encroaching upon the forest, give good grounds for the fear of irreparable injury to the commerce of the important towns on the upper waters of that river, unless measures are taken to prevent the expansion of "improvements" which have already been carried beyond the demands of a wise economy.

In the Eastern United States the general character of the climate, soil, and surface is such, that for the formation of very destructive torrents a much longer time is required than would be necessary in the mountainous provinces of Italy or of France. But the work of desolation has begun even there, and wherever a rapid mountain-slope has been stripped of wood, incipient ravines already plough the surface, and collect the precipitation in channels which threaten serious mischief in the future. There is a peculiar action of this sort on the sandy surface of pine-forests and in other soils that unite readily with water, which has excited the attention of geographers and geologists. Soils of the first kind are found in all the Eastern States; those of the second are more frequent in the exhausted counties of Maryland, where tobacco is cultivated, and in the more southern territories of Georgia and Alabama.

In these localities the ravines which appear after the cutting of the forest, through some accidental disturbance of the surface, or, in some formations, through the cracking of the soil in consequence of great drought or heat, enlarge and extend themselves with fearful rapidity.

In Georgia and in Alabama, Lyell saw "the beginning of the formation of hundreds of valleys in places where the primitive forest had been recently cut down." One of these, in Georgia, in a soil composed of clay and sand produced by the decomposition in situ of hornblendic gneiss with layers and veins of quartz, "and which did not exist before the felling of the forest twenty years previous," he describes as more than 55 feet in depth, 300 yards in length, and from 20 to 180 feet in breadth. Our author refers to other cases in the same States, "where the cutting down of the trees, which had prevented the rain from collecting into torrents and running off in sudden land-floods, has given rise to ravines from 70 to 80 feet deep." [Footnote: Lyell, Principles of Geology, 10th ed., vol i., 345-6.] Similar results often follow in the North-eastern States from cutting the timber on the "pine plains," where the soil is usually of a sandy composition and loose texture.

American Forest-Trees.

The remaining forests of the Northern States and of Canada no longer boast the mighty pines which almost rivalled the gigantic sequoia and redwood of California; and the growth of the larger forest-trees is so slow, after they have attained to a certain size, that if every pine and oak were spared for two centuries, the largest now standing would not reach the stature of hundreds recorded to have been cut within two or three generations. [Footnote: The growth of the white pine, on 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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, Ma.s.sachusetts 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 circ.u.mference; and he mentions another pine growing in a rocky swamp, which at the age of thirty-two years, "gave seven feet in circ.u.mference 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. A new measurement in 1871 gave a diameter of two feet eight inches, being an increase of four inches in eleven years, a slower rate than that of preceding years. It could not have been more than three inches through when transplanted, and up to 1860 must have increased its diameter at the rate of about seven-tenths of an inch per year, almost double its later growth. In 1871 the crown had a diameter of 63 feet.

In the same neighborhood, elms transplanted in 1803, when they were not above three or four inches through, had attained, in 1871, a diameter of from four feet to four feet two inches, with a spread of crown of from 90 to 112 feet. Sugar-maples, transplanted in 1822, at about the same size, measured two feet three inches through. This growth undoubtedly considerably exceeds that of trees of the same species in the natural forest, though the transplanted trees had received no other fertilizing application than an unlimited supply of light and air.] Dr. Williams, who wrote about sixty years ago, states the following as the dimensions of "such trees as are esteemed large ones of their kind in that part of America" [Vermont], qualifying his account with the remark that his measurements "do not denote the greatest which nature has produced of their particular species, but the greatest which are to be found in most of our towns."

Diameter. Height.

Pine.......... 6 feet, 247 feet.

Maple......... 5 " 9 inches b.u.t.tonwood.... 5 " 6 " Elm........... 5 " Hemlock....... 4 " 9 " Oak........... 4 " > From 100 to 200 feet.

Ba.s.swood...... 4 " Ash........... 4 " Birch......... 4 " /

He adds a note saying that a white pine was cut in Dunstable, New Hamps.h.i.+re, in the year 1736, the diameter of which was seven feet and eight inches. Dr. Dwight says that a fallen pine in Connecticut was found to measure two hundred and forty-seven feet in height, and adds: "A few years since, such trees were in great numbers along the northern parts of Connecticut River." In another letter, he speaks of the white pine as "frequently six feet in diameter, and two hundred and fifty feet in height," and states that a pine had been cut in Lancaster, New Hamps.h.i.+re, which measured two hundred and sixty-four feet, Emerson wrote in 1846: "Fifty years ago, several trees growing on rather dry land in Blandford, Ma.s.sachusetts, measured, after they were felled, two hundred and twenty-three feet." All these trees are surpa.s.sed by a pine felled at Hanover, New Hamps.h.i.+re, about a hundred years ago, and described as measuring two hundred and seventy-four feet. [Footnote: Williams, History of Vermont, ii., p. 53. Dwight s Travels, iv., p. 21, and iii, p. 36. Emerson, Trees of Ma.s.sachusetts, p. 61. Parish, Life of President Wheelock, p. 56.] These descriptions, it will be noticed, apply to trees cut from seventy to one hundred and forty years since.

Persons, whom observation has rendered familiar with the present character of the American forest, will be struck with the smallness of the diameter which Dr. Williams and Dr. Dwight ascribe to trees of such extraordinary height. Individuals of the several species mentioned in Dr. Williams's table are now hardly to be found in the same climate, exceeding one-half or at most two-thirds of the height which he a.s.signs to them; but, except in the case of the oak and the pine, the diameter stated by him would not be thought very extraordinary in trees of far less height, now standing. Even in the species I have excepted, those diameters, with half the heights of Dr. Williams, might perhaps be paralleled at the present time; and many elms, transplanted, at a diameter of six inches, within the memory of persons still living, measure four and sometimes even five feet through. For this change in the growth of forest-trees there are two reasons: the one is, that the great commercial value of the pine and the oak have caused the destruction of all the best--that is, the tallest and straightest-- specimens of both; the other, that the thinning of the woods by the axe of the lumberman has allowed the access of light and heat and air to trees of humbler worth and lower stature, which have survived their more towering brethren. These, consequently, have been able to expand their crowns and swell their stems to a degree not possible so long as they were overshadowed and stifled by the lordly oak and pine. While, therefore, the New England forester must search long before he finds a pine fit to be the mast Of some great ammiral, beeches and elms and birches, as st.u.r.dy as the mightiest of their progenitors, are still no rarity.

[Footnote: 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, Necessita dei Boschi pp. 17, 18.]

California fortunately still preserves her magnificent sequoias, which rise to the height of three hundred feet, and sometimes, as we are a.s.sured, even to three hundred and sixty and four hundred feet, and she has also pines and cedars of scarcely inferior dimensions. The public being now convinced of the importance of preserving these colossal trees, it is very probable that the fear of their total destruction may prove groundless, and we may still hope that some of them may survive even till that distant future when the skill of the forester shall have raised from their seeds a progeny as lofty and as majestic as those which now exist. [Footnote: California must surrender to Australia the glory of possessing the tallest trees. According to Dr. Mueller, Director of the Government Botanic Garden at Melbourne, a Eucalyptus, near Healesville, measured 480 feet in height. Later accounts speak of trees of the same species fully 500 feet in height. See Schleiden, Fur Baum und Wald, p. 21.