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197. Communications.

the fences, furniture, and thousand utensils, and machines of every kind, the principal materials for which are taken directly from the forests, we should be reduced to a condition of destitution and barbarism.

Trees, besides being useful, are ornamental-they enter largely into the material of the landscape gardener. Desolate indeed would be our dwellings were their environs entirely treeless. They are associated with our early recollections-they become in a great degree companions of our lives; and we unconsciously form strong attachments for such as grow near our homes-thus increasing our love of home, and improving our hearts.

It therefore becomes a duty to study these noble specimens of vegetable growth; we should know what trees we already have in Wisconsin, and what kinds it would be advisable to introduce. Every farmer at least should be familiar with the trees that grow in his woods; and know enough of botany and vegetable physiology to be able to preserve them from harm or injury. He should study to keep up a supply that shall always be equal to the demand-as the intelligent farmer strives to supply annually to the soil (by manures or otherwise), the exhausted elements, so he should provide for an annual growth of wood that shall be at least equal to the amount consumed.

We propose in the following pages to give so much of the botanical characters of the sixty trees indigenous to our State, as will enable any one by the aid of the illustrations to distinguish them with certainty; and also such general information in regard to their several uses, as will tend to call attention to the importance of the subject. A large volume would be required to contain all that could be desired in regard to these trees.

Though we have at present in almost every part of Wisconsin an abundant supply of wood for all our present purposes, the time is not far distant when, owing to the increase of population, and the increased demands from the neighboring States of Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota, a scarcity will begin to be felt. This scarcity may be considered as already begun in several of the counties along our southern border, where there was originally much prairie and open land. In these counties, the annual fires