Abies Canadensis, Michx. Hemlock. Found in the northern part of the State. Larix Americana, Michx. Larch Tamarack. Found north. Capressus thyoides, L. White cedar. North; found also on moist rocks, Paint creek, Ross county, etc. Juniperus Virginiana, L. Red cedar. Common. Large trees formerly grew on Lake Erie islands and on moist rocks in the south. Tarus Canadensis. American yew. Common in the northern part of the State, as on Lake Erie islands; grows also near Sinking Springs, on Brush creek, Highland county, and elsewhere. Smilax rotundifolia, L. Common. glauca, Walt. tamnoides, L. GREEN BRIERS. Dr. J. A. Warder, from the committee to whom was referred the resolutions at the forenoon session relative to Forest Distribution, reported that the last two resolutions had been changed by the committee, the third one remaining in the same form as when offered at the forenoon session. He then read the resolutions, the fourth and fifth having been changed so as to read as follows: 4th. Resolved, That we urge our Legislature to encourage by suitable legislation the plainting of artificial forests, and setting the highways and railroads with lines of useful and ornamental trees. 5th. Resolved, That this Convention will be gratified to have the directors of the Agricultuaal and Mechanical College use their best endeavors to encourage timber planting, and the preservation of our forests, native and artificial, and also to develop a thorough knowledge of our sylvan treasures. The following is the report submitted by Dr. Warder: PRESERVATION OF TIMBER TREES. After considering the matter referred to your committee, it appears to them that whoever gives the subject of forestry a serious thought, must be impressed with the vast importance to this nation of a full proportion of timber lands. If we bestow the least attention upon this great question; if we contemplate the immense present consumption of timber, the vastly increasing demands of our civilization, and the constantly diminishing supply of this valuable material, we shall be filled with apprehensions of an impending timber famine. We cannot stop these demands; we can do little even to economize the consumption; but it is high time that we had begun to replace the trees that we and our predecessors have been so ruthlessly destroying. Indeed, the restoration of our forests has become a question of great national importance-worthy of the most serious consideration of our prominent statesmen, and of the earnest concurrence of the farmers and land-owners of the country. Perhaps the general government, the most extensive land-holder, should set the example, as is done by the ruling powers in Europe. Many persons might urge such a plan, and insist that extensive tracts of land should be planted with trees to pro duce public forests; but we believe that private enterprises are much more in accordance with the ideal American policy. However, these efforts may sometimes need to be fostered, and will require legal enactments for their protection from troublesome inroads, as will be pointed out in another part of this report. VARIOUS USES. Some of the demands upon our forests may be alluded to. Fuel is required in a great many of the processes of our civilization. It is used very highly to warm our houses and to cook our food. Enormous amounts are consumed in the reduction of ores, in the preparation of various metals, and in their further modifications in the arts and manufactures, and immense quantities are used in the generation of steam, both in stationary and locomotive engines, where coal is not readily accessible; while the hill-sides and the lowlands of our noble rivers have been stripped bare within the recent era of steam navigation. It is true that we have rich treasures of fossil fuel in our wonderful development of coal, but there is still a continuing demand for recent vegetable fuel, which must be met. Architecture will ever continue to create a large demand for the products of the forest. The preponderance of wooden buildings that characterize a new civilization will gradually diminish with the introduction of more solid, more enduring, and safer materials, both for walls, girders, floors, finish and roofs. Stone, brick, iron and slate will be more and more freely introduced into our houses and other edifices; but still there will always be a large demand for timber by the architect. Furniture. Even were our dwellings all constructed of these more enduring materials, drawn from the mineral rather than from the vegetable kingdoms, we still need immense quantities of the finest trees to provide the furniture of our households. The rich forests of the tropics have been ransacked for their beautiful woods, but just now the noble walnuts and other hard woods of our country are chiefly in demand, and are carried away by water and railroad from the inmost recesses of our forests. The Engineer requires large quanties of the finest and best timber for the preparation of bridges and other works of construction, for the wharves and warehouses of the merchant, and especially for the timbers of the floating navies that are employed in conveying the commerce of the world. The Railways could not exist without forests to supply its superstructure of ties and stringers, its trestle work and bridges, to say nothing of its numerous cars for the conveyance of passengers and freights, and the necessary platforms, ware-houses, depots and station-houses, for their accommodation, besides the fences which our laws require them to erect. There is scarcely any branch of manufacture that is not more or less dependent upon the forest for its success, but we may point particularly to the great establishments for the production of agricultural machines, which consume large quantities of the very best lumber produced in the country. A single establishment is said to have required 28,000 of our finest walnut trees to furnish gun stocks to supply our army for the first two years of the war*; and the same author asserts that so small a branch of manufacture as the making of lucifer matches, demands the choicest clear pine lumber from many thousand trees. Mr. Geo. P. Marsh quotes Palissy, who long ago quaintly wrote: "I have divers times thought to set down in writing the arts which shall perish when there shall be no more wood; but when I *Geo. P. Marsh. had written down a great number, I did perceive that there could be no end of my writing, and having diligently considered, I found that there was not any which could be followed without wood." Surely the agriculturist cannot dispense with wood—his wagons, his plows, his harvesters, and every tool he uses, all require this indispensable material in their construction. But then think of the fences which the customs of a barbarous age still require him to maintain at enormous expense-amounting in the United States to the sum of $1,747,549,931, or an average tax of nearly $7 per acre of the land enclosed.t In all these various ways of using timber, it is manifest that the total consumption of this material must, indeed, be vast. Mr. Bryant, who has thoroughly investigated the lumber trade of the Northwest. says that 3,311,372,255 feet of lumber are annually cut in the forests of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota; and that this product results from the stripping of 883,032 acres of land, or nearly six times as much as all the timber plantations aunually made. The Agricultural Report for 1870 states that the original surveys of Wisconsin and the adjoining peninsula of Michigan, north of latitude 44°, returned 10,000,000 acres of valuable forests, but that one-half is already cut off, and that 1,000,000 acres of hard-wood forest have also been cleared for farms, leaving 4,000,000 (four million) acres of timber land. The mills of that region cut 750,000,000 (seven hundred and fifty million) feet of lumber each year. The total amount shipped at the ports of Lake Michigan, in 1869, was 1,750,000,000 (one thousand seven hundred and fifty million) feet. Mr. Perriam, of Chicago, reports the estimate of the yield of those pine forests to be 300,000 (three hundred thousand) feet from 40 acres-some say more than that. Allowing 320,000 (three hundred and twenty thousand) feet, it will require more than 200,000 (two hundred thousand) acres to yield one year's supply. He claims the product of 100,000 (one hundred thousand) acres more to furnish the hewn timbers, shingles, ties and telegraph poles-with 30,000 (thirty thousand) acres cleared for farming purposes-and we have a grand total of 330,000 (three hundred and thirty thousand) acres annually taken from our northern timber reserves. Besides this terrible drain upon the natural forest wealth of our country-effected directly by man, in clearing his lands for the plow, and in felling the noble trees for the lumber they produce-there are still other agencies at work for their destruction, which must not be overlooked. The depredations of insects are sometimes very serious, and call for the more thorough study of the habits of these insignificant creatures. Some of them attack the foliage only, thus affecting the health and growth of the trees; others consume the fruit and prevent the free reproduction of young growths. Some classes consume the wood itself, deteriorating its value, while the trees are standing, and others destroy it after they are felled and made into boards. The forester needs to study entomology. Many animals of larger growth frequently do great damage in the forest. The industrious beaver cuts down many fine trees along the borders of streams; but, except in the western plains, where the trees may be individually counted, we need not consider the depredations of this interesting creature. But our domestic animals are far more injurious to the forests' and should not be allowed to set a foot on the farmer's timber lot. They not only twist down and browse off the young trees that are coming on for a succession to the primitive * Man and Nature-quoted in the excellent prize essay of the Ohio Board of Agriculture, awarded to my young friend, Dan. Millikin, of Hamilton, Ohio. + U. S. Agricul. Report, 1871, p. 510. Report of Illinois Horticultural Society for 1872. growth, but, by their tramping and poaching the ground, they injure the superficial feeding rootlets, and the trees of the beautiful blue-grass wood-lawns soon present indications of decay, by dying at the top. Immense losses also occur to our forests by fires. These are often the result of carelessness; frequently they are caused by accident or by the sparks from a passing locomotive; and sometimes they arise from the wantonness of thoughtless persons, but it is difficult to provide a remedy or preventive. Fires are most frequent during a very dry season, when leaves, grass, and weeds are all parched to a condition resembling tinder, and are so inflammable with the intense heat of the summer sun, that even a lightning flash may be able to kindle the blaze that shall spread and consume the growth upon thousands of acres. In the summer of 1871, great volumes of smoke were observed in the Rocky Mountains for a month or more, and they could be seen by the traveler on the plains for a distance of one hundred miles from north to south. The destruction of timber was immense. In the autumn of the same year, extensive fires occurred in the forests from Minnesota eastward to New York and Pennsylvania, and Mr. Lapham assures us that thousands of square miles of forest were destroyed.* Mr. Perriam says that the destruction by fire in 1871 has been estimated as equal to a ten years' supply, the value of which, at $20 per thousand, amounts to $215,000,000. It is a melancholy fact that the grand forests of the Atlantic coast, which to the discoverers of the continent appeared inexhaustible, have long since melted away. When the mountain ranges of the interior were reached, they, too, yielded up their wealth of lumber from all approachable points, whence it has been floated to the sea board upon every available stream. With the advance of civilization beyond the great Apalachian chain, the rivers flowing in an opposite direction have also been freighted with the produce of the western slopes to such an extent that the demands of the country can be no longer satisfied with the timber supplies furnished by these forests. The pine lands of the great lakes were next attacked, and made to yield immense quantities to the everincreasing demand, until it is calculated, as already shown, that these regions cannot continue to supply our necessities much longer; and we are threatened with a timber famine that must affect the present gezeration. Mr. I. A. Lapham, of the Signal Service, in his paper on the great fires of 1871, says that the forests of Wisconsin and Michigan will be consumed within fifty years. Other writers assign a much earlier date for this catastrophe. I now quote from a report presented to the Agricultural Congress, held at St. Louis, Missouri, last May, prepared by R. S. Elliott, industrial agent of the Kansas Pacific Railway: "The forests of the continent are rapidly passing away. Large districts in the Atlantic States are already stripped of their most valuable timber. In less than twenty-five years the accessible forests in the region of the great lakes, on the upper waters of the Mississippi, and in the British provinces adjacent, will be exhausted. The industrial progress of the Southern States is consuming trees, both deciduous and evergreen, at an accelerating rate. In the Rocky Mountains, where hard woods are unknown, the pine, spruce and cedars are disappearing before the farmer, the miner, the architect and the railroad builder. On the Pacific coast the immense home demand, ever increasing, together with the exportation to England, France, Australia, China, Japan, South America, Mexico and the Pacific Islands, foretell the exhaustion of the California timber in twenty years, and of those available in Oregon and regions northward within a comparatively brief period. * Report of Signal Service, 1872 page 186. "The demand for the product of the forest constantly increases, the supply constantly and in a growing ratio diminishes, and prices constantly augment. The causes now in operation, and daily gaining strength, can have but one effect-that of exhausting all the available sources of supply within the lives of persons now in existence. This appalling prospect, the view of which becomes more vivid the more it is studied, should arouse the farmers, the land-owners and legislators. It is vital to the future welfare of our people that the reproduction of our forests should at once begin; not on a small scale, nor in few localities, but in a large measure and co-extensive with our settlements. A broad statesmanship in the national and state legislatures should at once take up the subject, and deal with it year by year until the great work be adequately begun. * * "The experiments which have already been made in isolated localities, though small, have inestimable value, since they teach us the ease and the comparative rapidity with which forest trees, useful to the farm, the workshop, and to the railroad, may be produced. They are also of value in demonstrating that however remote the profit of forest-culture may have been heretofore considered, it is yet true that the artificial plantation may, in a very few years, be made to yield annual returns equal to the cost. There may be some who regard forest-planting as a work of mystery and grandeur, beyond the reach of the common farmer. This is a mistake. Nearly all the most important deciduous trees may be grown from seed as readily as Indian corn. Of many species the seed may be sown broadcast and harrowed in. The seeds of many trees may be planted either in the fall or spring, as may be most convenient. Some of the soft-wooded trees will grow from cuttings as readily as the grape, and either seeds or cuttings of deciduous trees may be at once planted where the trees are to stand. Nor need the most unlettered farmer deny himself the pleasure and the profit of the conifers and evergreens. The plants, furnished at prices which are insignificant in comparison to their value, are abundant at reliable nurseries, and with reasonable care are sure to grow. "No part of the earth is supplied with a greater variety of useful trees, both of the hard and soft-wooded kinds, than the United States, and these native trees can all be readily grown in artificial plantations. It is not aloue the pines, spruces, and cedars that make up our valuable timbers. The hard-wooded trees- the ash, the oaks, the hickories, the maples, the walnuts, and the chestnuts, of which we have been heretofore so lavish — have a value in the arts that no figures can estimate. They may be said to be essential to our civilization, and forests of these and other trees must be grown, or our children will be forced to depart from our modes of life. West of longitude 100 the material of a common wagon does not grow on the continent, and we are fast exhausting it east of that meridian. Ohio and Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri, have girdled and burnt hard-wood trees that would to-day be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. If failing springs, and protracted drouths and extremes of temperature suggest replanting, the people may safely rely on a future market more certain than that for any other product of the soil." I cannot, in this report, attempt to enter upon the investigation of the very important and interesting inquiries that arise respecting the influences of forests upon the climate of the country. This is undoubtedly great, and properly-distributed belts and groves of trees cannot fail to affect the climatic conditions of the atmosphere near the earth's surface, both in regard to its mobility and also to its hygrometric constitution. The influence of trees in checking and tempering the winds that sweep over an open, flat country, are manifest to every one who has traveled in a prairie region, and the effect of the little planting that has incidentally occurred in northern Illinois has already made it a matter of remark that this region is less windy than it was at the time of its settle |