Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1889-05-23
FOREST DESTRUCTION.
How the Country's Woodland Tracts
are Fast Disappearing.

The past winter was remarkable for q
terrible destruction of timber products
throughout the United States. In Mich
igan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, the lar
ger pine timber is already exhausted,
and smaller trees, which the lumbermen
once scorned to cut, are now sacrificed.
Even the timber upon the Indian reser-
vations is being taken.
The approaching exhaustion OF the
timber supply OF the Northwest is call
ing into use the yellow pine of the South,
and forests from Arkansas to Georgia
are being heavily drawn upon. On tho
Pacific coast perceptible inroads are be-
ing made upon the seemingly inexhaus-
tible forests of the Puget Sound region;
this district is called upon to supply
great quantities of ties and other materi-
al for railways in South America, us well
rs the ordinary needs OF the Pacific
slope.
In New England the supply of pine
timber has long been practically ex-
hausted. The ordinary lumber of New
England is now spruce, and even this is
being taken at a rate more rapid than
ever.
A New Hampshire journal says that
one lumber company, whose headquar-
tiers are at the lakes which are the sources
of the Connecticut River. will have put
into the streams this winter Il hundred
million feet of spruce lumber. Other
firms and individuals in Northern New
Hampshire will contribute so much to
the production that the total output o.
the mills of the State will be several
hundred million feet.
These figures do not convey a very
definite idea to the minds of people who
know little of timber measurements, but
they help to make it clear that thegreat
forests of our northern mountainsare
swiftly disappearing. The same New
Hampshire journal from which the fig
ures just given are taken, says that these
forests are disappearing to return no
more, for the land in Northern New
Hampshire from which this timber
comes does not reproduce its growth,
and when once stripped remains bare.
The people who live in the vicinity OF
the White Mountains, and who gain
their livelihood in considerable meas
ure from the yearly return of tourists
and health-seekers to the mountains,
begin to realize that one of the chief ut
fractions of the region will disappear
with the forests. Bleak, treeless, cheer
less hills can hardly attract many yisi-
tors. The streams must tend to run
dry, the ponds disappear, and thous-
and beauties be lost.
In the Adirondack Mountains of New
York similar destruction is going on,
md the consequences can hardly be less
disastrous. Many places, both in tho
White Mountains and the Adirondacks,
which were formerly beautiful and
favorite places of resort, ARE now,
through the loss Of their trees, barren
desolate and deserted. The hills, though
pasturage, are being stripped Of their
very soil, and are crumbling away.
Fires also contribute to strip the land
of its timber, but fires and numbering
are not the only causes Of forest destruc-
ton. 4 leading authority on this sub
ject says that, taking the country
through, pasturage is worse enemy to
the forests than even fire, because it is
everywhere. It destroys more slowly,
but destroys as certainly and completely.
There can be nc permanent forest where
forest LAND js psstured.
Many owIers Of tracts Of woodland
also tend to destroy them by pruning
and clearing away the underground, and
thus destroy the conditions under which
tie woods have grown. The woods need
shade for their perfection. In many
regions where the forest land reclothes
itself with timber, after being cut Oh,
on the northern slopes of the hills, the
southern slopas when stripped of their
timber, remain bare The young plants
are killed by the scorching sun.
1t is the part of craftsmanship to pre-
serve to the people the woodlands, ut
least. which are sill the property OF the
nation. There is probably no part Of
the country SO far away from means Of
that its timber products
will not soon come into demand, and be
if steps are not taken to pre-
serve them. Youths Companion.