Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-08-26
FOREST CULTURE.

supply these neeos Will be richly rewarded.
FOREST CULTURE.
A Congress of Forestry is now sitting in
Montreal. The subject of forest culture
is one of those very important ones to the
due consideration Of which public attention
cannot be brought. There is no country
in the world to-day which is threatened
with more serious consequences from the
destruction of its forests than the United
States. So rapidly and wastefully have
they been consumed that recent calcula-
tions give less than twenty years for the
complete destruction of what remains of
them, and then the progress Of the nation
must be seriously checked by the necessity
of importing all the timber used. The
effects of this destruction of the forests
upon climatic conditions, agriculture, and
even upon the Availability of large tracts,
are so important that they must sooner or
later command the attention at present
refused to them. Europe has suffered
what we are about to suffer in these re-
spects, and though we may shut our eyes
to the consequences of our barbarous folly,
we cannot escape them. 1t seems, how
ever, almost hopeless to agitate the subject
Congress some years ago created Com
missioner of Forestry, and he has issued
several reports filled with representations
showing the urgent need of remedial action.
But when attempts have been made to
preserve what remains of the public tim
Der, the men who have grown rich by
stealing it have organized powerful lobbies
and defeated legislation. In fact it is
scarcely doubtful that the United States is
powerless to protect It's own forests. Some
years ago it undertook to do this in the
case of the Florida live oak forests. They
were to be left for the use of the navy
yards. The only result of the attempt,
however, was that Congress actually paid
several contractors very high prices for
timber which they had stolen from Gov
eminent lands. The Florida forests dis
appeared, and so will all the public forests,
apparently.
The general Government cannot protect
its own property, in fact. Whether the
State Governments could do 80 is is another
question, which has yet to be tried, but
we think it quite improbable. Neverthe.
less it as certain as anything can be, that
unless the general Government does some
thing to arrest the destruction of the
forests, or to replace them, in less than
generation evils will be induced which
must produce the most injurious conse-
quences. The recklessness, improvidence
and greedy selfishness which are at the
bottom of the wholesale and rapid de-
struction of timber do not speak well for
the national tendencies, but it may be
some comfort to rehecs that no nation
has yet manifested any more foresight and
self-restraint. In California, however, we
shall suffer among the earliest. Our forests
are being destroyed with great rapidity,
and this is a matter which concerns every
farmer in the valleys quite as much as
mining debris. Nothing can compensate
for the denudation of the mountains. If
that is once completed, it will be impossi-
BILE to make new plantations, either, for in
such case the SHOWS and rains will
wash away the soil from the higher
slopes, and create avalanches which
will permit No young growth of tim
Der to establish itself. The denudation
of the mountains, therefore, ought to be
provided against by appropriate legisla-
ton, for it threatens irreparable injuries to
the State. In the valleys forestry might
well be cultivated. The Sacramento and
San Joaquin valleys are capable of being
relieved from the at times disagreeable
heats of midsummer by a proper planta.
ton of trees. If the farmers would under
take this in systematic way they would
find their advantage in it after few years,
for regular and extensive plantations Of
trees would in time exert an influence upon
the precipitation of moisture, and render
the surrounding country less arid and more
fertile. The west side of the San Joaquin
can be reclaimed in this way alone, we
believe, aad very considerable increase of
value could be given to scores of thousands
of acres in the two great valleys, by suf-
ticient and systematic planting of trees.