WASTE LAND AND FOREST CULTURE.

Southland Times, Issue 2140, 25 June 1875, Page 3

WASTE LAND AND FOREST CULTURE.

(FROM THE CALIFORNIA FARMER.) After a century spent in spoiling our woodlands, we are, as a people, slowly awakening to the fact that the chief end of man is not to cut down trees. We are beginning to learn also that, as far as being incompatible with forests, permanent civilization is impossible without them — that the tree-slayer's ambition to bring the whole land under tillage would result, if successful, in making tillage a waste of labor through climatic disturbances. Alternations of drought and deluge, blighting heats and blasting colds, have ever been the penalty for general forest destruction ; and many a land once fertile is now a desert for this cause alone. Indeed, woodlands are to climate what the balance wheel is to machinery, the great conservator and regulator, without which all other conditions are wasted. There is probably not a periodical in the country which has not had more or less to say about the waste of our woodlands. The general opinion seems to be that we can recover the advantages we have squandered only by the creation of great forest reserves, with a general commission of forestry to see to their protection. Had we a strongly centralized Government, it might be easy enough to carry out such a scheme successfully. As things are, we very much doubt its feasibility, except perhaps in regions like the Adirondack Wilderness, where the soil is unfit for anything else, and where such precautions are very little needed. Within our personal recollection, large areas in Clinton and Essex counties have been twice stripped of timber by lumbermen and charcoal burners; yet to-day the same hills are covered with a thrifty third growth. Where the difficulties of transportation are so great, there is little danger that the natural wood growth will fail to keep pace with the woodcutters. It is only where land has been cleared and brought under tillage, or laid waste by repeated fires, that special effort is required for the restoration of the forests. The fears that have been expressed in regard to such irreclaimable wildernesses as those of Northern New York, are therefore quite gratuitous. Besides, it is a general distribution of woodlands, not local forests, however extensive, that the country chiefly needs. The farms of Central New York are benefited by groves in their immediate neighborhood far more than by the forests of Essex and Franklin counties. Still more do the farmers of the West require frequent spaces of woodland to break the storms of the prairies, to regulate the rainfall and temper the climate, and to meet the local demand for wood. Great forest reserves in Michigan and Wisconsin would help them comparatively little. They should luuk lather to local roeaßures for the cultivation of trees ; and the most they should ask of Government is a law authorising townships to compel the gradual conversion of unused land, into woodland. In every part of the country there are tracts of land held by individuals or by corporations for speculative purposes. Very largely such landholders are non- residents, who count on being enriched through other men's efforts. While A, B, and C are clearing their farms and establishing schools, churches and other conditions of civilization, a market is made for the lands of D, who contributes nothing to the advancement of the new society, yet gains in the end perhaps more than the actual settlers. It would be no injustice to him to make him do his part towards the building up of the community through whose labor he is made rich ; and there is no way in which this could be more surely accomplished than by compelling him to plant ft portion — say ! one-tenth — of his idle land to trees every year. There would be no injustice in this, for the growth of the timber would add year by year to the value of his investment, while the resident community would be benefited by securing a local supply of fuel and lumber, with all the climatic advantages of abundant woodland. The sfcttler can ill afford to wait twenty or fifty years for the maturing of a crop ; the speculator, on the other hand, who is simply holding the land for its " unearned increment," can well afford to have a legitimate increment in timber growth slowly swelling the value of his investment. The necessity of planting might limit his purchases, but it would scarcely limit his profits in the end. In all the older States there are vast areas of waste land owned by railway companies and other corporations, much of it of little value for plough land or pasturage, yet well suited for the growth of wood. The railway companies are in the habit of sending to the remotest parts of the country for ties, when, by the exercise of a little forethought, they might grow them more cheaply at home. It would be to their advantage in the end, as well as a benefit to the community at large, if they were compelled by law to do so.