Box 14, Folder14: Forest Trees 1867

REPORT

ON THE

DISASTROUS EFFECTS

OF THE

Destruction of Forest Trees,

NOW GOING ON SO RAPIDLY IN THE

STATE OF WISCONSIN.

Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste.--George P. Marsh, Man and Nature, p. 35.

By I. A. LAPHAM, J. G. KNAPP AND H. CROCKER, Commissioners.

MADISON, WIS. ATTWOOD AND RUBLEE, STATE PRINTERS, JOURNAL OFFICE. 1867.

INTRODUCTION.

The undersigned, having been appointed Commissioners, under the provisions of a law of the State of Wisconsin, entitled "an act relating to the growth of forest trees," approved March 23, 1867, to ascertain and report in detail to the legislature at its next session certain facts and opinions relating to the injurious effects of clearing the land of forests upon the climate; the the evil consequences to the present and future inhabitants; the duty of the state in regard to the matter; what experiments should be made to perfect our knowledge of the growth and proper management of forest trees; the best method of preventing the evil effects of their destruction; what substitutes for wood can be found in the state; and generally such facts as may be deemed most useful to persons desirous of preserving or increasing the growth of forest and other trees in this state-- have complied with the duties thus imposed upon them, as well as the limited time and want of adequate means would allow, and now have the honor to submit the following report:

NECESSITY OF TREES.

Both past history and present experience show that a country destitute of forests as well as one entirely covered with them is only suited to the condition of a barbarous or semi-barbarous people. Deprive a people of the comforts and conveniences derived directly or indirectly from forest products, and they soon revert to barbarism. It is only where a due proportion between the cultivated land and the forests is maintained that man can attain and enjoy his highest civilization.

It would seem to be the part of wisdom in a state, as well as with individuals, to profit by the experience of others, in the present and in past time, to imitate their good works and to avoid their evil doings.

For it seems to be established as a fact that a country entirely covered with dense timber, as well as one destitute of trees, are each inhabited by savages. As heavy forests are removed and the country is brought under culture, civilization advances until a certain breadth of plowing and pasturage is reached; but if the removal of trees advances beyond that extent, so that the country is denuded of its trees, barbarism equally ferocious as in the timbered region again sets in. In the one case the savage men, desti-

4

tute of all domestic animals except the dog, are driven to the seacoast and water-courses, where by means of rudely constructed canoes they gratify the human passion for migration to and from their small corn patch, fishing places and hunting grounds; in the other, the horse, the camel or even the ox affords the means of wandering over extensive countries of thin grass, or desert sands, in quest of their prey.

Palestine, a land once "flowing with milk and honey," so full of native products as to attract the children of Israel from the highly favored plains of Egypt; a country which for many ages sustained a numerous, happy and prosperous people, is now comparatively a barren waste; its productions scarcely sufficient for a miserable population dwindled to only one-tenth of its former numbers. The most careful examination of the soil shows no want of the elements of vegetable growth- it remains as fertile to-day as in the most ancient times, thus showing that we must look to the changes in the local condition of the climate, rather than the exhaustion of the soil for the causes of the wonderful changes that have taken place; and these local climatic changes could only be produced by the indiscriminate destruction of the forests that originally covered the whole country.

Egypt and Palestine were once the granary of the world, by these countries have long since lost their proud position among the nations of the earth. We now claim to hold the keys to the food-production of the country, but we are also in danger of soon losing the position unless we profit by their example.

WARNINGS OF HISTORY.

Warnings from the experience of others may be found nearer home, and in more modern times. According to a recent report, it appears that in Switzerland the forests have been destroyed at such a rate that they do not now yield an adequate supply for the present inhabitants. The higher mountain regions have heretofore been considered the store houses of wood for the most populous parts of level Switzerland, and for foreign countries; but the depredations have been so extensive that many of the inhabitants are now suffering for the want of wood, and some of them are compelled to convey their fuel from six to twelve miles up the mountains. If the future forests, (says this report,) should not be better managed, and their too extensive removal stopped, they would soon be entirely ruined in some parts of these mountain regions, and than there would prevail such a state of things as already exists in Asia-Minor, Greece, a large portion of Italy, Spain, Southern France, &c., where forests abounded in former times. The decrease of fertility on the Alps, and especially on the upper boundary, the disappearance of the forests in the higher regions, the unfavorable changes of the weather during the time of vegetation, the frequent and extensive devastations of floods, avalanches, and precipitation of rocks, and large landslides on the sides of the mountains, filling up the valleys, are chiefly occa

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sioned by the extensive clearing of the forests, and the careless management, or rather, the mismanagement of those entrusted with its performance; and these persons now must ascribe the largest share of the misery which has and will befall them, to their own selfishness, and disregard of the laws of nature.

Timber protection is absolutely necessary for the successful cultivation of certain crops and fruit-trees. Dussard maintains, that the mistral, the dreaded northwest wind of France, whose chilling blasts are so fatal to tender vegetation in spring, "is the child of man, the result of his devastations. Under the reign of Augustus, the forests which protected the Cevennes, were felled or destroyed by fire, en masse A vast country, before covered with impenetrable woods- powerful obstacles to the movement and even the formation of hurricanes- was suddenly denuded, swept bare, stripped, and soon after a scourge, hitherto unknown, struck terror over the land, from Abignon to the Buches du Rhone, and thence to Marseilles, and along the whole maritime frontier. The people thought this wind was a curse sent of God They raised alters to it, and offered sacrifices to appease its rage."

Professor Rosa, in the Polytechnic Journal for December, 1861, gives the following: "To supply the extraordinary demand for Italian iron, occasioned by the exclusion of English iron, in the time of Napoleon I., the furnaces of the villages of Bergamo were stimulated to great activity. The ordinary productions of charcoal not being sufficient to feed the furnaces and the forges, the woods were felled, the copses cut before their time, and the whole economy of the forest was deranged. At Piazzatore there was such a devastation of the woods, and consequently such an increased severity of the climate, that maize no longer ripened. An association formed for the purpose, effected the restoration of the forest, and maize flourished again in the fields of Piazzatore"

Similar ameliorations have been produced by plantations in Belgium. Bande makes this statement: "a spectator placed on the famous bell tower of the cathedral at Antwerp, saw, not long since, on the opposite side of the Scheldt, only a vast desert plain; now he sees a forest, the limits of which are confounded with the horizon. Let him enter within its shade. The supposed forest is but a system of regular rows of trees, the oldest of which is not forty years of age. These plantations have ameliorated the climate which had doomed to sterility of the soil where they are planted. While the tempest is violently agitating their tops, the air a little below is still, and sands far more barren than the plateau of La Hague, have been transformed, under their protection, into fertile fields." But to come still nearer home; many of those immigrants to Wisconsin, who came from New York and Pennsylvania, look back with pleasure to the days when they gathered peaches and plumbs, from the trees, growing wherever the seeds happended to take root; but if they return again to that old homestead they will find the primeval forests cut away and destroyed, and those trees dead,

[x A fortified City of Lombardy 29 M. N.E. of Milan]

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and they will be told that new ones cannot be reared except in the most sheltered places. They will also find some of their favorite apple and pear trees falling before some unseen enemy.

The Hon. Horace Greeley, in his lecture delivered at the annual spring exhibition of the Brockport, N. Y., Union Agricultural Society, speaking on this subject says: "This matter of raising timber needs to be better cared for. Taking the forest off has left our lands exposed to the bleak and driving winds, and has aggravated the disadvantages of our hot, dry summers, and bleak, cold winters. Lack of forests has narrowed the fruit region, and is constantly narrowing it. More forests must be raised, and those of the best kinds." So too, within the last ten years the peach and the pear grew in all the southern half of the State of Michigan; but now, when by the destruction of the forests, their ameliorating influence on the climate of the state is lost, the peach trees all over the state have failed, except upon a narrow strip under the east shore of lake Michigan.

T. T. Lyon, Esq., of Jackson, Michigan, a veteran pomologist of that state, places this matter in a clear light. In 1864, he said: "The natural resust of this wholesale destruction is manifesting itself in the high winds, the more sudden changes, and the more extreme cold of our winters. Although in consequence of this state of affairs the peach, once almost as sure throughout our state as the apple, is now, in effect, driven under the lee of Lake Michigan; and although our staple grain crop, wheat, was but two years since almost a total failure from want of shelter and protection, and though we have reason to fear that we have not yet seen the worst, the process of destruction yet goes on unchecked, and with a strange fatuity. Although the subject is one that deeply concerns us all, no measures are being taken or even seriously contemplated to stay the growing calamity.

"Two years since, at a similar meeting, I availed myself of the opportunity to urge upon the agriculturalists of the state the importance of action in this matter. During the next winter the wheat crops of the entire state, from the want of the usual covering of snow, and the general lack of shelter from wind and sun, was diminished in amount more than one half- a loss to the state in a single year of more than 5,000,000 bushels. The present winter threatens a repetition of the same calamity; and with the great breadth of wheat sown, we shall be fortunate if the amount of loss be not essentially greater than before."

A committee of the House of Representatives of that state at its last session reported to that body on the subject of the forest trees, and stated that, last year the loess on all that part of the state lying south of the Michigan Central railroad,- a region deprived of the ameliorating influences of Lake Michigan upon the southwest side- and comprising the richest agricultural portion of the state, was estimated at no less than three-fourth of the entire wheat crop! From what inquiries they had been able to make, the loss on the wheat crops alone, of that state, for the last four years, is not