Year: 1873

NOuSTcSs ~ NAehnas


We give our readers this mornings valuable
report Of the instructive speeches and other
proceedings of the First International Con-
gress Of Land and Forest Culturists, recently
held at Vienna. At this meeting of between
three and four hundred learned men from
the various countries of Europe and one or
two from the United States 1--WE regret that
the number of representatives present from our
country was not larger), the Austrian Minister
of Agriculture, Won Chlamecky, was chosen
president to whom was assigned the initia-
tory work involved in the resolutions adopted
These resolutions recognize the fact that to
effectually check the continually increasing
destruction of the woods now going on in both
hemispheres, especially at the sources and
along the courses of great rivers, resulting in
the loss of the soil, the exhaustion of the
rivers and the arrangement Of trade, interna-
tional agreements and governmental measures
of protection are needed and that govern
ments looking to the well-being of their peo-
pie should proceed to the collection of posi-
tive facts and data upon this important subject,
in view of intelligent action.


The facts and arguments advanced in the
speeches of this Congress in behalf of sys-
tematic national and international protection
and cultivation Of forests we need not here
reproduce. They are facts and reasons which
from time to time have repeatedly within the
last few years been urged upon the attention
Of the American people. by this journal
What we now want is action from the govern
ments most deeply interested, including the
government of the United States and our
State governments respectively. Our general
government can do much for the future pros
perity of our new States and Territories of
the West in protecting the timber on
the public domain from fires and wanton de-
struction by the axe, and in encouraging the
protection of trees and their cultivation by
actual settlers. Our State governments can do
much in arresting the wasteful destruction Of
their forests and in creating public senti-
ment in favor Of their enlargement The
appointment of the intelligent committee
Legislature to inquire into the expediency Of
preserving as State park some eight hun
dred thousand acres of the wooded mountain
GUS district in which the Hudson River has its
sources was a step in the right direction, and
we are glad that the committee earnestly
plead for the proposed State park.


From Illinois to California the scarcity of
timber has been teaching our people, more or
less, the value and necessity Of trees in groves
and woods for the protection Of their houses
and the sheltering of their cattle from summer
heats and hurricanes and the storms Of winter,
and for all the innumerable uses of that prime
article of necessity, wood, to say nothing of
the broader questions of bringing down rain
and protecting the soil to some extent from q
too rapid evaporation. In the young and
thrifty prairie State Of Nebraska, for example,
premiums are given by the State for the plant
ing and cultivation Of timber, and an annual
festival has been there established, called, we
believe, Arbor Day, devoted to tree planting.
The traveller over the fertile plains OF
Nebraska will comprehend the popularity Of
these measures among her people, when, from
the boundless timberless prairies, he turns his
longing eyes to the refreshing groups of cot
tonwoods on the islands of the Platte River,
and halls them as the redeeming feature of the
landscape. But the subject is inexhaustible,
and in dropping it for the present it is with
the hope that general action for the protection
and cultivation of forests, and in the line sug-
gested, will be the good point Of this Vienna
Congress.


The IMPORT AND EXPORT TRADE. The
Bureau of Statistics in the report which is
being prepared for publication, shows that the