The San Francisco call., 1898-08-24
NEED OF A FORESTRY POLICY.

TT HE revelations made by our correspondent in
 the Shasta region may we'll command wide
 spread attention. The forest acreage of Califor mia bears wealth than all the rest of the State above ground below it. This wealth IS direct, in the money value of the timber crop standing and the power to reproduce that crop permanently, and it IS indirect in the value of the forests the miner and agriculturist a conservator of water. It may be said with truth that the amount of water will fali the bare granite of our mountains when de- stroyng the forests has stripped them of their soil as new But that water will flow suddenly into the streams, converting them into torrents, and will run rapidly away to the beyond recovery for homie use The climate of the State is largely an effect of the forests which cothe the mountain Hanks When these deforested and their soil is washed away physical conditions will approximate those of the desert The changes of temperature will be more acute the liability to frost in the foothil orchards and vineyards will be greater, and vast areas, fertile will lose their character and to yield
 1T our policy of destruction is not arrested it may be said, verify after us, the deluge.
 If we were moving blindy to these intolerable consequences ignorance might be But we have before the example of older countries Moses found Palestine flowing with milk and honey a land full of corn and wine. Then its mountain slopes were covered with forest and groves dotted its plains These gone and the land is desert Where the daughters of Shiloh danced in the vine yards, the sore-eyed Bedoun crouches in the sand The grapes of Eschol are no more and Naboth's vineyard glisens in the sum- blear desert that no Jczebel would covet.
 In all the wide stretch from the Euphrates to the Scheldt the same process of deorestation has been for ages bringing the conditions
 Governments have taken the alarm, and trees the wards of the nations from the shores of the Adriatic to the Bavarian Tyrol More millions than yielded by the vanished forests being spent for their renewal. Forestry has become a profes- sional occupation It is inteigenty promoted by Austria, Germany and France Already natural con dons reinstated by art and the artificial forests as carefully harvested crop of bread corn, are beginning to bring in excess of the cost of caring for them, and in many of those countries the forest lands promise permanent and increasing l yield
 In this country have too much politics, too much discussion of party differences and too little polite and intelligent public attention to the preser- yaton of the most valuable of all our natural re- sources What makes the difference between the desert and the sown? Trees and nothing but trees That land is attractive to that has forests or the conditions for their production We have already pointed out the analogy between prairie and forest conditions. Nature marked and fixed the con ditions of fertility upon which depend the fitness of a land for the support of life and for mans habita- ton. Man proceeds to destroy these conditions and then bewails his lot when it is made hard by his own 1 ignorance and greed
 Let California be wise before 1t is too late and save the tree which is the mother of the fountain |