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The Culture and Management of Our Native Forests (1882)
- University of Massachusetts Press
- Chapter
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209 hoRace wiLLiaM shaLeR cLeveLaNd the Culture and management of our native forests, for development as timber or ornamental Wood (1882) From The Culture and Management of Our Native Forests , for Development as Timber or Ornamental Wood, by H. W. S. Cleveland (Springfield, Mass.: H. W. Rokker, 1882), iii–xvi. Man’s progress from barbarism to civilization is indicated by the degree of skill he has attained in the cultivation of those products of the earth which minister to his necessities and comfort. As long as the natural resources are sufficient to supply his primary wants of food and clothing, he will make no effort to increase them, and it is only as he is driven by the necessities of increasing demand and diminishing supply that he exerts himself to secure relief by artificial means. The first efforts of the savage at cultivation are of the rudest description, and just in proportion as tribes and nations advance in numbers, power and intelligence, do they also gain in improved methods of tillage , in greater knowledge of the science of culture, and in better implements and machinery for its performance. These are simple truths, which everyone will recognize. Their application to the subject of forest culture, lies in the obvious fact that it is not until a nation has reached mature age, and an advanced stage of civilization , that the native growth of wild forest proves insufficient for the increasing demand for timber, and the necessity of providing, by artificial culture, for an additional supply, begins to be felt. We could hardly have a more striking illustration than is here afforded, of the adaptation of the provisions of nature, first, to the immediate necessities of existence , and subsequently to the development of the latent powers of the human race. The cereals and vegetables which are essential to man’s daily support are of annual growth. Their culture is comparatively simple, and he soon learns that his very existence is dependent upon their renewed production with each recurring summer. The forests are equally essential to his further development, by furnishing material for the construction of houses and ships, and the countless implements by whose aid he attains to almost superhuman power. But the forest requires the 210 REstoRation and manaGEmEnt of thE nativE landsCaPE lifetime of two or three generations for the full attainment of maturity. In the infancy of the race, the necessity of providing for such distant wants could not be foreseen. Nature, therefore, as if she had been conscious that forest culture was too arduous an undertaking for primitive man, has furnished so abundant a supply, that no deficiency or necessity of economy is felt till the nation has acquired such a degree of intelligence as to be competent to the solution of the problem. And this is the point at which we now stand, and which the older nations of Europe have long since passed, seeing plainly that our natural sources are well-nigh exhausted, yet shrinking from the unfamiliar task of seeking to supply the deficiency by artificial means. Many once powerful nations have dwindled into insignificance in consequence of their neglect of this lesson which nature imperatively demands that we should learn. Their fate should be to us a warning, as the efforts of the most intelligent nations of today should be to us an example, to save us from a like fate. The necessity for action is imminent, and can not be averted. The subject of the increasing demand and rapidly diminishing supply of timber throughout the country has been so thoroughly discussed by legislative committees, both State and National, by agricultural societies and by able individual writers, that it would seem but a waste of time to bring forward the oft-repeated statistics in evidence of the danger that threatens us, and the urgent need of adopting measures of protection and relief. Assuming, therefore, that my readers are familiar with the data which prove the necessity, I pass at once to the consideration of the means of averting the danger. The only measure of relief thus far suggested with any definite prospect of success , is the planting of new forests. Much has been said, it is true, about the preservation of those that remain; but the words seem meaningless, in view of the fact that private property is beyond the control of the Government, and Congress declines even to grant means to prevent the destruction of that which still pertains to the public domain. The...