The New York Times, March 7, 1875, p.6:WASTE OF FOREST TREES.Minnesota has felt this danger in a peculiar degree. A Superintendent of Tree-planting on one of the great railroads of that State, Mr. HODGES, in a recent address to the State Agricultural Society, gives the following spirited sketch of the future effects of tree consumption:
...This great state is not only deficient in trees, but has carelessly wasted what Providence has supplied to her. Minnesota is not by any means the most deficient of the Western or Northwestern States in this vegetation. She is better off than Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, or Dakota; yet it is estimated that one third of her best agricultural lands are rendered unfit for settlement or cultivation through want of forests. The annual consumption of wood by families throughout the State is estimated at 1,140,000 cords; that for locomotives and similar uses, at 220,000 cords; and for bridges and railroads, 50,000; or a total of 1,710,000 cords. Estimating the timbered lands to yield an average of 23 cords per acre, this would make 75,000 acres stripped annually for households and railroads alone. Besides this must be reckoned the consumption for building and fencing purposes, which will probably amount to as much, or a destruction of the forests on 150,000 acres each year in that State alone. What is done to balance this tremendous destruction of timber? The railroads appreciate the importance of tree-planting, both in protecting their tracks from snow and in adding to the value of their farmlands. The St. Paul and Pacific, First Division, have planted out four million young forest trees on 147 acres. This, of course, is but a small compensation, but it shows that the people have begun to see the danger and to intelligently provide against it. The experienced Superintendent of Tree-planting, whom we have quoted above, asserts confidently that the farmer on the bleakest portion of the treeless regions can, "with less money than it would cost to buy a breaking-plow, surround his stock-yard and buildings witha wind break within five years" which will effectually protect him. He lays it down as an axiom that a crop of trees can be grown as surely, and, in proportion to its value, with far less expense than a crop of corn, and that ten acres properly planted in timber will in five years supply plenty of fuel for a family's use and fencing for a large farm. Mr. HODGES maintains, besides, that the net profits on a quarter section of prarie planted with forest trees will within ten years exceed the profits from ten times as much ground set out with wheat. On one farm a black walnut tree is mentioned which has grown, in nine years from seed, twenty feet high, with five inches in diameter. White pine is spoken of twenty feet high and six to eight inches in diameter, transplanted from the forest eight years ago, when only a few inches high. A balsam fir in ten years has grown twenty-two feet, and covers fifty feet with its branches. Equally remarkable facts are given in regard to other trees, showing that in fertile soil timber may be grown in a few years sufficient for fuel or mechanical uses. With such facts before our farmers, they cannot be too diligent, both for their own interests and for the benefit of the country, in planting out shade and forest trees. The effect of forests alone upon the climate, in checking the great floods of our rivers and in moderating cold, is something which should be considered by all intelligent agriculturalists. The general planting of trees in the West would do more to avert some of the dangers from droughts and grasshoppers than any other one practical measure. |