Chapter III: The Woods (12)

The experience of 1871 ought not to be wholly without value as a lesson. It is not possible to estimate the damage by forest fires in that disastrous year, in what were lately the North-western States, and in Canada, but as the demand for lumber, and consequently, its market price, are rising at a rate higher than the interest on capital, in a geometrical ratio, one may almost say it is probable that ten years hence those fires will be thought to have diminished the national wealth by a larger amount than even the terrible conflagration at Chicago.

There is no good reason why insurance companies should not guarantee the proprietor of a wood as well as the owner of a house against damage by fire. In Europe there is no conceivable liability to pecuniary loss which may not be insured against. The American companies might at first be embarrassed in estimating the risk, but the experience of a few years would suggest safe principles, and all parties would find advantage in this extension of security.

Forest Legislation.

I have alleged sufficient reasons for believing that a desolation, like that which has overwhelmed many once beautiful and fertile regions of Europe, awaits an important part of the territory of the United States, and of other comparatively new countries over which European civilization is now extending its sway, unless prompt measures are taken to check the action of destructive causes already in operation. It is almost in vain to expect that mere restrictive legislation can do anything effectual to arrest the progress of the evil in those countries, except so far as the state is still the proprietor of extensive forests. Woodlands which have passed into private hands will everywhere be managed, in spite of legal restrictions, upon the same economical principles as other possessions, and every proprietor will, as a general rule, fell his woods, unless he believes that it will be for his pecuniary interest to preserve them. Few of the new provinces which the last three centuries have brought under the control of the European race, would tolerate any interference by the law-making power with what they regard as the most sacred of civil rights--the right, namely, of every man to do what he will with his own. In the Old World, even in France, whose people, of all European nations, love best to be governed and are least annoyed by bureaucratic supervision, law has been found impotent to prevent the destruction, or wasteful economy, of private forests; and in many of the mountainous departments of that country, man is at this moment so fast laying waste the face of the earth, that the most serious fears are entertained, not only of the depopulation of those districts, but of enormous mischiefs to the provinces contiguous to them. [Footnote: "The laws against clearing have never been able to prevent these operations when the proprietor found his advantage in them, and the long series of royal ordinances and decrees of parliaments, proclaimed from the days of Charlemagne to our own, with a view of securing forest property against the improvidence of its owners, have served only to show the impotence of legislative action on this subject."--Clave, Etudes sur l'Economie Forestiere, p. 32.

"A proprietor can always contrive to clear his woods, whatever may be done to prevent him; it is a mere question of time, and a few imprudent cuttings, a few abuses of the right of pasturage, suffice to destry a forest in spite of all regulations to the contrary."--Dunoyer, De la Liberte du Travail, ii., p. 452, as quoted by Clave, p. 353.

Both authors agree that the preservation of the forests in France is practicable only by their transfer to the state, which alone can protect them and secure their proper treatment. It is much to be feared that even this measure would be inadequate to preserve the forests of the American Union. There is little respect for public property in America, and the Federal Government, certainly, would not be the proper agent of the nation for this purpose. It proved itself unable to protect the live-oak woods of Florida, which were intended to be preserved for the use of the navy, and it more than once paid contractors a high price for timber stolen from its own forests. The authorities of the individual States might be more efficient.] The only legal provisions from which anything is to be hoped, are such as shall make it a matter of private advantage to the landholder to spare the trees upon his grounds, and promote the growth of the young wood. Much may be done by exempting standing forests from taxation, and by imposing taxes on wood felled for fuel or for timber, something by more stringent provisions against trespasses on forest property, and something by premiums or honorary distinctions for judicious management of the woods; and, in short, in this matter rewards rather than punishments must be the incentives to obedience even to a policy of enlightened self-interest. It might be difficult to induce governments, general or local, to make the necessary appropriations for such purposes, but there can be no doubt that it would be sound economy in the end.

In countries where there exist municipalities endowed with an intelligent public spirit, the purchase and control of forests by such corporations would often prove advantageous; and in some of the provinces of Northern Lombardy, experience has shown that such operations may be conducted with great benefit to all the interests connected with the proper management of the woods. In Switzerland, on the other hand, except in some few cases where woods have been preserved as a defence against avalanches, the forests of the communes have been of little advantage to the public interests, and have very generally gone to decay. [Footnote: A better economy has been of late introduced into the management of the forest in Switzerland. Excellent official reports on the subject have been published and important legal provisions adopted.] The rights of pasturage, everywhere destructive to trees, combined with toleration of trespasses, have so reduced their value, that there is, too often, nothing left that is worth protecting. In the canton of Ticino, the peasants have very frequently voted to sell the town-woods and divide the proceeds among the corporators. The sometimes considerable sums thus received are squandered in wild revelry, and the sacrifice of the forests brings not even a momentary benefit to the proprietors. [Footnote: See in Berlepscu, Die Alpen, chapter Holzschlager und Flosser, a lively account of the sale of a communal wood.]

Fortunately for the immense economical and sanitary interests involved in this branch of rural and industrial husbandry, public opinion in many parts of the United States is thoroughly roused to the importance of the subject. In the Eastern States, plantations of a certain extent have been made, and a wiser system is pursued in the treatment of the remaining native woods. [Footnote: When the census of 1860 was taken, the States of Maine and New York produced and exported lumber in abundance. Neither of them now has timber enough for domestic use, and they are both compelled to draw much of their supply from Canada and the West.] Important experiments have been tried in Massachusetts on the propagation of forest-trees on seashore bluffs exposed to strong winds. This had been generally supposed to be impossible, but the experiments in question afford a gratifying proof that this is an erroneous opinion. Piper gives an interesting account of Mr. Tudor's success in planting trees on the bleak and barren shore of Nahant. "Mr. Tudor," observes he, "has planted more than ten thousand trees at Nahaut, and, by the results of his experiments, has fully demonstrated that trees, properly cared for in the beginning, may be made to grow up to the very bounds of the ocean, exposed to the biting of the wind and the spray of the sea. The only shelter they require is, at first, some interruption to break the current of the wind, such as fences, houses, or other trees." [Footnote: Trees of America, p. 10.]

Young trees protected against the wind by a fence will somewhat overtop their shelter, and every tree will serve as a screen to a taller one behind it. Extensive groves have thus been formed in situations where an isolated tree would not grow at all.

The people of the Far West have thrown themselves into the work, we cannot say of restoration, but rather of creation, of woodland, with much of the passionate energy which marks their action in reference to other modes of physical improvement. California has appointed a State forester with a liberal salary, and made such legal provisions and appropriations as to render the discharge of his duties effectual. The hands that built the Pacific Railroad at the rate of miles in a day are now busy in planting belts of trees to shelter the track from snow- drifts, and to supply, at a future day, timber for ties and fuel for the locomotives. The settlers on the open plains, too, are not less actively engaged in the propagation of the woods, and if we can put faith in the official statistics on the subject, not thousands but millions of trees are annually planted on the prairies.

These experiments are of much scientific as well as economical interest. The prairies have never been wooded, so far as we know their history, and it has been contended that successful sylviculture would be impracticable in those regions from the want of rain. But we are acquainted with no soil and climate which favor the production of herbage and forbid the rearing of trees, and, as Bryant well observes, "it seems certain that where grass will grow trees may be made to grow also." [Footnote: The origin of our Western treeless prairies and plains, as of the Russian steppes, which much resemble them, is obscure, but the want of forests upon them, seems to be due to climatic conditions and especially to a want of spring and summer rains, which prevents the spontaneous formation of forests upon them, though not necessarily the growth of trees artificially planted and cared for. Climatic conditions more or less resembling those of our Western territories produce analogous effects in India. Much valuable information on the relations between climate and forest vegetation will be found in an article by Dr. Brandis, On the Distribution of Forests in India, in Ocean Highways for October, 1872.

In the more eastwardly prairie region fires have done much to prevent the spread of the native groves, and throughout the whole woodless plains the pastorage of the buffalo alone would suffice to prevent a forest growth. The prairies were the proper feeding-grounds of the bison, and the vast number of those animals is connected, as cause or consequence, with the existence of these vast pastures. The bison, indeed, could not convert the forest into a pasture, but he would do much to prevent the pasture from becoming a forest.

There is positive evidence that some of the American tribes possessed large herds of domesticated bisons. See Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, i., pp. 71-73. What authorizes us to affirm that this was simply the wild bison reclaimed, and why may we not, with equal probability, believe that the migratory prairie-buffalo is the progeny of the domestic animal run wild?

There are, both on the prairies, as in Wisconsin, and in deep forests, as in Ohio, extensive remains of a primitive people, who must have been more numerous and more advanced in art than the present Indian tribes. There can be no doubt that the woods where such earthworks are found in Ohio were cleared by them, and that the vicinity of these fortresses or temples was inhabited by a large population. Nothing forbids the supposition that the prairies were cleared by the same or a similar people, and that the growth of trees upon them has been prevented by fires and grazing, while the restoration of the woods in Ohio may be due to the abandonment of that region by its original inhabitants. The climatic conditions unfavorable to the spontaneous growth of trees on the prairies may possibly be an effect of too extensive clearings, rather than a cause of the want of woods.

It is disputed whether the steppes of Russia were ever wooded. They were certainly bare of forest growth at a very remote period; for Herodotus describes the country of the Scythians between the Ister and the Tanais as woodless, with the exception of the small province of Xylaea between the Dnieper and the Gulf of Perekop. They are known to have been occupied by a large nomade and pastoral population down to the sixteenth century, though these tribes are now much reduced in numbers. The habits of such races are scarcely less destructive to the forest than those of civilized life. Pastoral tribes do not employ much wood for fuel or for construction, but they carelessly or recklessly burn down the forests, and their cattle effectually check the growth of young trees wherever their range extends.

At present, the furious winds which sweep over the plains, the droughts of summer, and the rights and abuses of pasturage, constitute very formidable obstacles to the employment of measures which have been attended with so valuable results on the sand-wastes of France and Germany. The Russian Government has, however, attempted the wooding of the steppes, and there are thriving plantations in the neighborhood of Odessa, where the soil is of a particularly loose and sandy character. The tree best suited to this locality, and, as there is good reason to suppose, to sand plains in general, is the Ailanthus glandulosa, or Japan varnish-tree. The remarkable success which has crowned the experiments with the ailanthus at Odessa, will, no doubt, stimulate to similar trials elsewhere, and it seems not improbable that the arundo and the maritime pine, which have fixed so many thousand acres of drifting sands in Western Europe, will be, partially at leaat, superseded by the tamarisk and the varnish-tree.

According to Hohenstein, Der Wald, pp. 228, 229, an extensive plantation of pines--a tree new to Southern Russia--was commenced in 1842, on the barren and sandy banks of the Ingula, near Elisabethgrod, and has met with very flattering success. Other experiments in sylviculture at different points on the steppes promise valuable results.] In any case the question will now be subjected to a practical test, and the plantations are so extensive, and, as is reported, so thrifty in growth, that one generation will suffice to determine with certainty and precision how far climate is affected by clothing with wood a vast territory naturally destitute of that protection.

I have thus far spoken only of the preservation and training of existing woods, not of the planting of new forests, because European experience, to which alone we can appeal, is conversant only with conditions so different from those of our own climate, soil, and arboreal vegetation, that precedents drawn from it cannot be relied upon as entirely safe rules for our guidance in that branch of rural economy. [Footnote: Many valuable suggestions on this subject will be found in Bryant, Forest Trees, chap. vi. et seqq.]

I apprehend that one rule, which is certainly alike applicable to both sides of the Atlantic--that, namely, of the absolute exclusion of domestic quadrupeds from all woods, old or young, not destined for the axe--would be least likely to be observed in our practice. The need of shade for cattle, and our inveterate habits in this respect, are much more serious obstacles to compliance with this precept than any inherent difficulty in the thing itself; for there is no good reason why our cattle may not be kept out of our woods as well as out of our wheatfields. When forest-planting is earnestly and perseveringly practised, means of overcoming this difficulty will be found, and our husbandry will be modified to meet the exigency.

The best general advice that can be offered, in the want of an experimental code, is to make every plantation consist of a great variety of trees, and this not only because nature favors a diversified forest-crop, but because the chances of success among a multitude of species are far greater than if we confine ourselves to one or two.

It will doubtless be found that in our scorching summer, especially on bare plains, shade for young plants is even more necessary than in most parts of Europe, and hence a fair proportion of rapidly growing trees and shrubs, even if themselves of little intrinsic value, ought to be regarded as an indispensable feature in every young plantation. These trees should be of species which bear a full supply of air and light, and therefore, in the order of nature, precede those which are of greater value for the permanent wood; and it would be a prudent measure to seed the ground with a stock of such plants, a year or two before sowing or transplanting the more valuable varieties.

More specific rules than these cannot at present well be given, but very brief experiments, even if not in all respects wisely conducted, will suffice to determine the main question: whether in a given locality this or that particular tree can advantageously be propagated or introduced. The special processes of arboriculture suited to the ends of the planter may be gathered partly from cautious imitation of European practice, and partly from an experience which, though not pronouncing definitively in a single season, will, nevertheless, suggest appropriate methods of planting and training the wood within a period not disproportioned to the importance of the object. [Footnote: For very judicious suggestions on experiments in sylviculture, see the Rev. Frederick Starr's remarkable paper on the American Forests in the Transactions of the Agricultural Society for -.]

The growth of arboreal vegetation is comparatively slow, and we are often told that, though he who buries an acorn may hope to see it shoot up to a miniature resemblance of the majestic tree which shall shade his remote descendants, yet the longest life hardly embraces the seedtime and the harvest of a forest. The planter of a wood, it is said, must be actuated by higher motives than those of an investment, the profits of which consist in direct pecuniary gain to himself or even to his posterity; for if, in rare cases, an artificial forest may, in a generation or two, more than repay its original cost, still, in general, the value of its timber will not return the capital expended and the interest accrued. [Footnote: According to Clave (Etudes, p. 159), the net revenue from the forests of the state in France, making no allowance for interest on the capital represented by the forest, is two dollars per acre. In Saxony it is about the same, though the cost of administration is twice as much as in France; in Wurtemberg it is about a dollar an acre; and in Prussia, where half the income is consumed in the expenses of administration, it sinks to less than half a dollar. This low rate in Prussia and other German states is partly explained by the fact that a considerable proportion of the annual product of the wood is either conceded to persons claiming prescriptive rights, or sold, at a very small price, to the poor. Taking into account the capital invested in forest-land, and adding interest upon it, Pressler calculates that a pine wood, managed with a view to felling it when eighty years old, would yield one-eighth of one per cent. annual profit; a fir wood, at one hundred years, one-sixth of one per cent.; a beech wood, at one hundred and twenty years, one-fourth of one per cent. The same author gives the net income of the New Forest in England, over and above expenses, interest not computed, at twenty-five cents per acre only. In America, where no expense is bestowed upon the woods, the value of the annual growth has generally been estimated much higher. Forest-trees are often planted in Europe for what may be called an early crop. Thus in Germany acorns are sown and the young seedlings cultivated like ordinary field-vegetables, and cut at the age of a very few years for the sake of the bark and young twigs used by tanners. In England, trees are grown at the rate of two thousand to the acre, and cut for props in the mines at the diameter of a few inches. Plantations for hoop-poles, and other special purposes requiring small timber, would, no doubt, often prove high remunerative.] But the modern improved methods of sylviculture show vastly more favorable financial results; and when we consider the immense collateral advantages derived from the presence of the forest, the terrible evils necessarily resulting from its destruction, we cannot but admit that the preservation of existing woods, and the more costly extension and creation of them where they have been unduly reduced or have never existed, are among the plainest dictates of self-interest and most obvious of the duties which this age owes to those that are to come after it.

Financial Results of Forest Plantation.

Upon the whole, I am persuaded that the financial statistics which are found in French and German authors, as the results of European experience in forest economy, present the question under a too unfavorable aspect; and therefore these calculations ought not to discourage landed proprietors from making experiments on this subject. These statistics apply to woods whose present condition is, in an eminent degree, the effect of previous long-continued mismanagement; and there is much reason to believe that in the propitious climate of the United States new plantations, regulated substantially according to the methods of De Courval, Chambrelent, and Chevandier, and accompanied with the introduction of exotic trees, as, for example, the Australian caruarina and eucalyptus [Footnote: Although the eucalyptus thrives admirably in Algeria--where it attains a height of from fifty to sixty feet, and a diameter of fifteen or sixteen inches, in six years from the seed--and in some restricted localities in Southern Europe, it will not bear the winters even of Florence, and consequently cannot be expected to flourish in any part of the United States except the extreme South and California. The writer of a somewhat enthusiastic article on this latter State, in Harper's Monthly for July, 1872, affirms that he saw a eucalyptus "eight years from a small cutting, which was seventy-five feet in height, and two feet and a half in diameter at the base."

The paulownia, which thrives in Northern Italy, has a wood of little value, but the tree would serve well as a shelter for seedlings and young plants of more valuable species, and in other cases where a temporary shade is urgently needed. The young shoots, from a stem polled the previous season, almost surpass even the eucalyptus in rapidity of growth. Such a shoot from a tree not six inches in diameter, which I had an opportunity of daily observing, from the bursting out of the bud from the bark of the parent stem in April till November of the same year, acquired in that interval a diameter of between four and five inches and a height of above twenty feet.] which, latter, it is said, has a growth at least five, and, according to some, ten times more rapid than that of the oak--would prove good investments even in an economical aspect. [Footnote: The economical statistics of Grigor, Arboriculture, Edinburgh, 1868, are very encouraging. In the preface to that work the author says: "Having formed several large plantations nearly forty years ago, which are still standing, in the Highlands of Scotland, I can refer to them as, after paying every expense, yielding a revenue equal to that of the finest arable land in the country, where the ground previously to these formations was not worth a shilling an acre." See also Hartig, Ueber den Wachsthumsgang und Ertrag der Buche, Eiche und Kiefer, 1869, and especially Bryant, Forest Trees, chap. ix.]

There is no doubt that they would pay the expenses of their planting at no distant period, at least in every case where irrigation is possible, and in very many situations, terraces, ditches, or even horizontal furrows upon the hillsides, would answer as a substitute for more artificial irrigation. Large proprietors would receive important indirect benefits from the shelter and the moisture which forests furnish for the lands in their neighborhood, and eventually from the accumulation of vegetable mould in the woods. [Footnote: The fertility of newly cleared land is by no means due entirely to the accumulation of decayed vegetable matter on its surface, and to the decomposition of the mineral constituents of the soil by the gases emitted by the fallen leaves. Sachs has shown that the roots of living plants exercise a most powerful solvent action on rocks, and hence stones are disintegrated and resolved into elements of vegetable nutrition, by the chemical agency of the forest, more rapidly than by frost, rain, and other meteorological influences.] The security of the investment, as in the case of all real-estate, is a strong argument for undertaking such plantations, and a moderate amount of government patronage and encouragement would be sufficient to render the creation of new forests an object of private interest as well as of public advantage, especially in a country where the necessity is so urgent and the climate so favorable as in the United States.

Instability of American Life.

All human institutions, associate arrangements, modes of life, have their characteristic imperfections. The natural, perhaps the necessary defect of ours, is their instability, their want of fixedness, not in form only, but even in spirit. The face of physical nature in the United States shares this incessant fluctuation, and the landscape is as variable as the habits of the population. It is time for some abatement in the restless love of change which characterizes us, and makes us almost a nomade rather than a sedentary people. [Footnote: It is rare that a middle-aged American dies in the house where he was born, or an old man even in that which he has built; and this is scarcely less true of the rural districts, where every man owns his habitation, than of the city, where the majority live hired houses. This life of incessant flitting is unfavorable for the execution of permanent improvements of every sort, and especially of those which, like the forest, are slow in repaying any part of the capital expended in them. It requires a very generous spirit in a landholder to plant a wood on a farm he expects to sell, or which he knows will pass out of the hands of his descendants at his death. But the very fact of having begun a plantation would attach the proprietor more strongly to the soil for which he had made such a sacrifice; and the paternal acres would have a greater value in the eyes of a succeeding generation, if thus improved and beautified by the labors of those from whom they were inherited. Landed property, therefore, the transfer of which is happily free from every legal impediment or restriction in the United States, would find, in the feelings thus prompted, a moral check against a too frequent change of owners, and would tend to remain long enough in one proprietor or one family to admit of gradual improvements which would increase its value both to the possessor and to the state.] We have now felled forest enough everywhere, in many districts far too much. Let us restore this one element of material life to its normal proportions, and devise means of maintaining the permanence of its relations to the fields, the meadows, and the pastures, to the rain and the dews of heaven, to the springs and rivulets with which it waters the earth. The establishment of an approximately fixed ratio between the two most broadly characterized distinctions of rural surface--woodland and ploughland--would involve a certain persistence of character in all the branches of industry, all the occupations and habits of life, which depend upon or are immediately connected with either, without implying a rigidity that should exclude flexibility of accommodation to the many changes of external circumstance which human wisdom can neither prevent nor foresee, and would thus help us to become, more emphatically, a well-ordered and stable commonwealth, and, not less conspicuously, a people of progress.