Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1882-04-02
Forestry Statistics.

In some cantons of Switzerland there
is a law forbidding the destruction OF a
tree without planting another to take its
place. This law Is an outgrowth of
necessity. It has been scientifically
demonstrated that the increase in violent
storms, inundations, and landslides In
Switzerland, scattering death and de-
struction on all sides, is due to deforest-
ing the mountains.
Gradually the timber has disappeared
until little remains, except on the high
slopes of the mountains, and that little
Is of inferior size and quality. Unless
the process is arrested, the mountains of
Switzerland will present as bald an ap-
pearance as those Alps which divide
France from Italy; and nothing more
desolate and dreary outside the steppes
of Asia, or the desert of Africa, presents
itself to the eye of the traveller.
Switzerland, compared with the area
OF the United States, is but speck, but
stretches of timbered lands, we are also
consuming them more rapidly.
A glance at the series of forestry bulle-
tins issued by the Census Bureau is suffi-
cient to alarm one for the future timber
supplies of the United States. The
maps show the original extent of the
forest lands and the area de-
nuded by the remorseless ak of
the lumberman. Take Michigan, the
great pine State of the Northwest. More
than three-fourths of the land, including
the upper peninsula, has been stripped
of its timber. A few statistics will show
that the amount of white pine remaining
on the Saginaw and its tributaries, and
in the basins of streams flowing into
Lakes Huron and Michigan, is estimated
at 29, 900, 900, 900 feet, board measure.
In the single year ending with May,
1880, 4,068, 773, 900 feet were cut. At
this rate the supply will be exhausted in
less than eight years. Of the same tim
ber on the peninsula there were 6,000,-
10000 remaining, in round numbers,
and of. this 328, 438, 900 feet cut in one
year. From Menominee and Delta
counties the merchantable pine, says the
Bulletin, has been almost entirely re-
moved The destruction of the hard
woods has been on the same exhaustive
scale.
The maps show that along every navi-
gable stream, and on the rivers of the
lakes, the timber has all been cut away,
and each year the Iumbermen have to
go back further into the interior for their
supplies, and the cost is increased by
the greater difficulty in getting the tim
Der to market.
Wisconsin has only 6, 100, 900, 900 feet
remaining of white pine. In the census
year $40, ,997, 600 feet were cut. How
long before Wisconsin will cease to
furnish supply of this valuable timber?
She has still 3,S40, 900 acres of hard
wood forest; but the ravages in that are
hardly less than in the pine lands
Minnesota still has II, 200, 900, 900 feet
of pine, and some G, IT'S, 900, 900 of mixed
pine and hard wood to boast of, but the
cut during the census year was lis, IT,
900 feet, and each year as the supplies
in Wisconsin and Michigan dwindle the
demand upon Minnesota's resources will
increase.
In short, unless something is done to
encourage the replanting of forests of
pine and hard weod it will not be twenty
years before there will be a timber
famine in the land, with prices so ex-
travagant as to put an end to building in
wood and to the use of wood as fuel.
We need not dwell On the effect of de-
forestry on climate and temperature.
This has been repeatedly done in these
columns. 1t is the universal testimony
of mankind that it results in diminution
of rainfall. and the dwindling away of
creeks and navigable streams, and an in
crease in sudden and devastating storms
and violent hurricanes. We have the
history of the old world before us, and
if we do not profit by the warning ex-
ample we deserve to be punished for
such crime against nature. Cincinnati
Commercial.