Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1880-02-17

| of its best pine lands In minnesota, yet accord
ing to the best information your COMMITTEE
I have bee.l able to gather there are fir, m eigh
million to ten million acres OF timber lands
including what is on Indian reservations. in
Guiding also waste lands which are only fit fO
| bearing timber-in the limits of Northern
Minnesota, the title to which has not ye
passed to private individuals. The last report
of the United States surveyor general estimates
| the unsurveyed area in Northern Minnesota a
$4,000, QUO acres. The government has received
only one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre
for the greater part of its pine timber lands
even when they have been disposed of at sale
What is worse, however, it has, we are Informed
| by the commissioner of the general land
| office, been robbed of millions Of acres
| of timber land by fraudulent use
| of the homestead laws soldiers additional
homestead, and half breed scripd. Under the
system hitherto practiced instances are not rare
in this State where whole townships once
covered with magnificent pine forest have been
perfectly cleared of timber and are now desert
wastes without sign of timber regrOwth, and
SO worthless that the owners have long since
ceased to pay any taxes thereon.
Whether it is commonly known or not, 1t is
nevertheless the fact that the pine never can be
propagated from the root or stump, as is the
case with deciduous trees, and that regrowth
can only be produced from the seed; also, that
the young pine plant requires for few years
protection from the sun afforded by larger
trees. When, therefore, pine forest is at once
wholly cut, nature is forever deprived OF the
means of the reproduction of pine on the same
spot.
The present commissioner of the general land
office In his report of 1876 said:
"a NATIONAL CALAMITY
is being rapidly and surely brought upon the
country by the useless destruction of the
9r,rI ar hn
provisions of the pre-enption and homestead
laws, is granting a license to destroy
millions of acres of pine forests of
almost incalcuIable value. which should be
preserved as a nations heritage" He charac-
terizes this destruction of timber as
wicked AND wANToN."
1t is worthy of notice that the then secretary
of the interior, Zachar;ah Chandler, man Of
experience in business az we'll as i'll govern
ment. especially commended' the commits
sioners views. So, the present secretary of
the interior, in his annual report for 1878, says
The disastrous consequences which always
follow the destruction of the forests IT a coun-
try are known to every well-lnformed man.
These consequences will inevitably come up
on us in comparatively short time, consider
ing the rapidity with which the timber growth
of this country is being swept away. unless
legislation be adopted systematically to arrest
this indiscriminate spoilation.'
This rapid consum ption of timber without
the government receiving any adequate
return therefor is all the mere to be deplOrod
when one orsiders the real value of acre of
pine timber. II requires about one hundred
and sixty years for an average pine tree such
as is cut for the market in our Minnesota pine
ries to grow to maturity. Now dollar invest
ed at i've per cent interest vii. double in
twenty years. In forty years it will amount to
81; in l6O years to 1886. Suppose an acre of
land on which Young pines have started has
cost 81, its value, allowing per cent in
crease, should be S256 at the expiration of 100
years, and when the trees have scarcely ma
tured, even without including any charges for
taxes. This but feebly illustrates the enor
nifty Of the timber waste that has been going
on for many years.
No reliable data is at hand from which to
calculate accurately the time required for the
pine to grow to maturity in the forests of the
Northwest. Emerson reports pines IN the Bo-
tanic Garden in Cambridge, Mass, the largest
of which, at 81 years of age, measured feet
inches around, 3 feet from the ground. Levi
Bartlett reports pines which had been cultivat-
ed in New Hampshire, having diameter OF 10
to 20 inches Mt 80 years of age. Sccording to
reliable authority the pine in the northern part
of Sweden requires 200, and on poorer ground
800 years to grow to good timber, while in the
southern part of that country, which is quite
fertile 100 years are sufficient.
The evils of an improvident consumption of
timber having no regard to its reproduction are
many. There is danger of scarcity of pine
timber at no very distant day. Already the
question Of fuel is one which excites attention;
SO also the supply of railroad ties. Among
other uses, wood IL already being required for
charcoal in the production of iron in this State.
Besides the effects of devastating the forests
are serious in lessening the supply Of water in
the Mississippi. The observations during sew
eral successive years of Dr.. Ebermayer, pro-
fessor at the Forest Academy at Ascbafenberg,
Bavaria, showed that the rainfall is greater ON
wood lands than on open lands; also that the
evaporation of water from wood lands is "a per
cent. less than from open lands In Europe,
several of the
GREAT RIVERS HAVE DECREASED IN DEPTH
in consequence of extensive forest cleal ings.
The Elbe, rising in Bohemia, where formerly
the forests were cut in reckless manner, di-
minished in depth ten feet in half century.
1t is considered that decrease in the Missis-
sippi during the past thirty yeers can be at
tributed in part to the extensive timber cut
ting on its tributaries. Among other injurious
phenomena resulting from forest devastations
is greater fatality of floods.
CONGRESS las STRONGLY COMMITTED ITSELF
to the policy of encouraging the growth of
timber on the Western prairies by enacting
laws on three different occasions to promote
that object. Under these laws there were
granted to private individuals in the year end
ing June 80, 1878, 1,S70434 acres
of land. Seeing that the government
is annually parting with couple of
million acres Of its domain to encourage the
growing of the more ordinary sorts of timber
it surely should not seem unreasonable to sup
pose it would be willing to make moderate
donation for perpetual endowment of an in
stitution calculated to promote the science and
practice of forestry.
If schools of forestry were of recent ,rigin
and had received but limited trial their intro
duction in this country might be of more
doubtful expediency; but they have existed in
Europe for nearly century. They are no long
er an experiment. They have been we'll test
ed. Their endow ment and organization have
as a rule been on q scale corresponding to what
we understand in this country by college, and
it cannot be denied that they have given
great impulse to the growing of timber on
waste lands, and to the economical manage
ment of forests. 1t is owing much to the in
fuence of such institutions that
one finds. in various places,
as for example on a considerable
part of the coasts of France and of Den ark
luxuriant and magnificent forests where a CEN
fury or two ago were nothing but naked and
sterile hills of sand.
As Germany is the country however which
has done more than an, other to ORIGINATE and