Governments and military commanders have at different periods deliberately destroyed forests by fire or the axe, because they afforded a retreat to robbers, outlaws, or enemies, and this was one of the hostile measures practised by both Julius Caesar and the Gauls in the Roman war of conquest against that people. It was also resorted to in the Mediterranean provinces of France, then much infested by robbers and deserters, as late as the reign of Napoleon I., and is said to have been employed by the early American colonists in their exterminating wars with the native Indians. [Footnote: For many instances of this sort, see Maury, Les Forets de la Gaule, pp. 3-5, and Becquerel, Des Climats, etc., pp. 301-303. In 1664 the Swedes made an incursion into Jutland and felled a considerable extent of forest. After they retired, a survey of the damage was had, and the report is still extant. The number of trees cut was found to be 120,000, and as an account was taken of the numbers of each species of tree, the doc.u.ment is of much interest in the history of the forest, as showing the relative proportions between the different trees which at that time composed the wood. See Vaupell, Bogens Indvandring, p. 35, and Notes, p. 55.]

In the Middle Ages, as well as in earlier and later centuries, attempts have been made to protect the woods by law, [Footnote: Stanley, quoting Selden, De Jure Naturali, lib. vi., and Fabricius, Cod. Psedap., V. T., i. 874, mentions a noteworthy Hebrew tradition of uncertain date, but unquestionably very ancient, which is one of the oldest proofs of a public respect for the woods.

"A Hebrew tradition attributes to Joshua ten statutes, containing precise regulations for the protection of the property of every tribe and of every head of a family against irregular depredations. Small quadrupeds were allowed to pasture in dense woods, not in thin ones; but no animal could feed in any forest without the consent of the proprietor of the soil. Every Hebrew might pick up fallen boughs and twigs, but was not permitted to cut them. Trees might be pruned for the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, with the exception of the olive and other fruit-trees, and provided there was sufficient shade in the place."--Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, part i., p. 271.

Alfred Maury mentions several provisions taken from the laws of the Indian legislator Manu, on the same subject.--Les Forets de la Gaule, p.

9.

The very ancient Tables of Heracles contain provisions for the protection of woods, but whether these referred only to sacred groves, to public forests, or to leased lands, is not clear.] as necessary for the breeding of deer, wild boars, and other game, or for the more reasonable purpose of furnishing a supply of building timber and fuel for future generations. It was reserved for more advanced ages to appreciate the geographical importance of the woods, and it is only in the most recent times, only in a few countries of Europe, that the general destruction of the forests has been recognized as the most potent among the many causes of the physical deterioration of the earth.

[Footnote: We must perhaps make an exception in favor of the Emperor Constantine, who commenced the magnificent series of aqueducts and cisterns which still supply Constantinople with water, and enacted strict laws for the protection of the forest of Belgrade, in which rise the springs that feed the aqueducts. See an article by Mr. H. A. Homes on the Water-Supply of Constantinople in the Albany Argus of June 6, 1872.]

Royal Forests and Game Laws.

The French authors I have quoted, as well as many other writers of the same nation, refer to the French Revolution as having given a new impulse to destructive causes which were already threatening the total extermination of the woods. [Footnote: Religious intolerance had produced similar effects in France at an earlier period. "The revocation of the edict of Nantes and the dragonnades occasioned the sale of the forests of the unhappy Protestants, who fled to seek in foreign lands the liberty of conscience which was refused to them in France. The forests were soon felled by the purchasers, and the soil in part brought under cultivation."--Becquerel, Des Climats, etc, p. 303.] The general crusade against the forests, which accompanied that important event, is to be ascribed, in a considerable degree, to political resentments. The forest codes of the mediaeval kings, and the local "coutumes" of feudalism, contained many severe and even inhuman provisions, adopted rather for the preservation of game than from any enlightened views of the more important functions of the woods. Ordericus Vitalis informs us that William the Conqueror destroyed sixty parishes and drove out their inhabitants, in order that he might turn their lands into a forest, [Footnote: The American reader must be reminded that, in the language of the chase and of the English law, a "forest" is not necessarily a wood.

Any large extent of ground, withdrawn from cultivation, reserved for the pleasures of the chase, and allowed to clothe itself with a spontaneous growth, serving as what is technically called "cover" for wild animals, is, in the dialects I have mentioned, a forest. When, therefore, the Norman kings afforested the grounds referred to in the text, it is not to be supposed that they planted them with trees, though the protection afforded to them by the game laws would, if cattle had been kept out, soon have converted them into real woods.] to be reserved as a hunting-ground for himself and his posterity, and he punished with death the killing of a deer, wild boar, or even a hare. His successor, William Rufus, according to the Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et des Rois d'Angleterre, p. 67, "was hunting one day in a new forest, which he had caused to be made out of eighteen parishes that he had destroyed, when, by mischance, he was killed by an arrow wherewith Tyreus de Rois [Sir Walter Tyrell] thought to slay a beast, but missed the beast, and slew the king, who was beyond it. And in this very same forest, his brother Richard ran so hard against a tree that he died of it. And men commonly said that these things were because they had so laid waste and taken the said parishes."

These barbarous acts, as Bonnemere observes, [Footnote: Histoire des Paysans, ii., p. 190. The work of Bonnemere is of great value to those who study the history of mediaeval Europe from a desire to know its real character, and not in the hope of finding apparent facts to sustain a false and dangerous theory. Bonnemere is one of the few writers who, like Michelet, have been honest enough and bold enough to speak the truth with regard to the relations between the church and the people in the Middle Ages.] were simply the transfer of the customs of the French kings, of their va.s.sals, and even of inferior gentlemen, to conquered England. "The death of a hare," says our author, "was a hanging matter, the murder of a plover a capital crime. Death was inflicted on those who spread nets for pigeons; wretches who had drawn a bow upon a stag were to be tied to the animal alive; and among the seigniors it was a standing excuse for having killed game on forbidden ground, that they aimed at a serf." The feudal lords enforced these codes with unrelenting rigor, and not unfrequently took the law into their own hands. In the time of Louis IX., according to William of Nangis, "three n.o.ble children, born in Flanders, who were sojourning at the abbey of St.

Nicholas in the Wood, to learn the speech of France, went out into the forest of the abbey, with their bows and iron-headed arrows, to disport them in shooting hares, chased the game, which they had started in the wood of the abbey, into the forest of Enguerrand, lord of Coucy, and were taken by the sergeants which kept the wood. When the fell and pitiless Sir Enguerrand knew this, he had the children straightway hanged without any manner of trial." [Footnote: It is painful to add that a similar outrage was perpetrated a very few years ago, in one of the European states, by a prince of a family now dethroned. In this case, however, the prince killed the trespa.s.ser with his own hand, his sergeants refusing to execute his mandate.] The matter being brought to the notice of good King Louis, Sir Enguerrand was summoned to appear, and, finally, after many feudal shifts and dilatory pleas, brought to trial before Louis himself and a special council. Notwithstanding the opposition of the other seigniors, who, it is needless to say, spared no efforts to save a peer, probably not a greater criminal than themselves, the king was much inclined to inflict the punishment of death on the proud baron. "If he believed," said he, "that our Lord would be as well content with hanging as with pardoning, he would hang Sir Enguerrand in spite of all his barons;" but n.o.ble and clerical interests unfortunately prevailed. The king was persuaded to inflict a milder retribution, and the murderer was condemned to pay ten thousand livres in coin, and to "build for the souls of the three children two chapels wherein ma.s.s should be said every day." [Footnote: Guillame De Nangis, as quoted in the notes to Joinville, Nouvelle Collection des Memoires, etc., par Michaud et Poujoulat, premiere serie, i., p. 335. Persons acquainted with the character and influence of the mediaeval clergy will hardly need to be informed that the ten thousand livres never found their way to the royal exchequer. It was easy to prove to the simple-minded king that, as the profits of sin were a monopoly of the church, he ought not to derive advantage from the commission of a crime by one of his subjects; and the priests were cunning enough both to secure to themselves the amount of the fine, and to extort from Louis large additional grants to carry out the purposes to which they devoted the money. "And though the king did take the moneys," says the chronicler, "he put them not into his treasury, but turned them into good works; for he builded therewith the maison-Dieu of Pontoise, and endowed the same with rents and lands; also the schools and the dormitory of the friars preachers of Paris, and the monastery of the Minorite friars."] The hope of shortening the purgatorial term of the young persons, by the religious rites to be celebrated in the chapels, was doubtless the consideration which operated most powerfully on the mind of the king; and Europe lost a great example for the sake of a ma.s.s.

The desolation and depopulation, resulting from the extension of the forest and the enforcement of the game laws, induced several of the French kings to consent to some relaxation of the severity of these latter. Francis I., however, revived their barbarous provisions, and, according to Bonnemere, even so good a monarch as Henry IV. re-enacted them, and "signed the sentence of death upon peasants guilty of having defended their fields against devastation by wild beasts." "A fine of twenty livres," he continues, "was imposed on every one shooting at pigeons, which, at that time, swooped down by thousands upon the new-sown fields and devoured the seed. But let us count even this a progress, for we have seen that the murder of a pigeon had been a capital crime." [Footnote: Histoire des Paysans, ii., p. 200.]

Not only were the slightest trespa.s.ses on the forest domain--the cutting of an oxgoad, for instance--severely punished, but game animals were still sacred when they had wandered from their native precincts and were ravaging the fields of the peasantry. A herd of deer or of wild boars often consumed or trod down a harvest of grain, the sole hope of the year for a whole family; and the simple driving out of such animals from this costly pasturage brought dire vengeance on the head of the rustic, who had endeavored to save his children's bread from their voracity. "At all times," says Paul Louis Courier, speaking in the name of the peasants of Chambord, in the "Simple Discours," "the game has made war upon us. Paris was blockaded eight hundred years by the deer, and its environs, now so rich, so fertile, did not yield bread enough to support the gamekeepers." [Footnote: The following details from Bonnemere will serve to give a more complete idea of the vexatious and irritating nature of the game laws of France. The officers of the chase went so far as to forbid the pulling up of thistles and weeds, or the mowing of any unenclosed ground before St. John's day (24th June), in order that the nests of game birds might not be disturbed. It was unlawful to fence-in any grounds in the plains where royal residences were situated; thorns were ordered to be planted in all fields of wheat, barley, or oats, to prevent the use of ground-nets for catching the birds which consumed, or were believed to consume, the grain, and it was forbidden to cut or pull stubble before the first of October, lest the partridge and the quail might be deprived of their cover. For destroying the eggs of the quail, a fine of one hundred livres was imposed for the first offence, double that amount for the second, and for the third the culprit was flogged and banished for five years to a distance of six leagues from the forest.--Histoire des Paysans, ii., p. 202, text and notes.

Neither these severe penalties, nor any provisions devised by the ingenuity of modern legislation, have been able effectually to repress poaching. "The game laws," says Clave, "have not delivered us from the poachers, who kill twenty times as much game as the sportsmen. In the forest of Fontainebleau, as in all those belonging to the state, poaching is a very common and a very profitable offence. It is in vain that the gamekeepers are on the alert night and day, they cannot prevent it. Those who follow the trade begin by carefully studying the habits of the game. They will lie motionless on the ground, by the roadside or in thickets, for whole days, watching the paths most frequented by the animals," etc.--Revue des Deux Mondes, Mai, 1863, p. 160.

The writer adds many details on this subject, and it appears that, as there are "beggars on horseback" in South America, there are poachers in carriages in France.] The Tiers Etat declared, in 1789, "the most terrible scourge of agriculture is the abundance of wild game, a consequence of the privileges of the chase; the fields are wasted, the forests ruined, and the vines gnawed down to the roots."

Effects of the French Revolution.

The abrogation of the game laws and of the harsh provisions of the forestal code was one of the earliest measures of the revolutionary government; and the removal of the ancient restrictions on the chase and of the severe penalties imposed on trespa.s.sers upon the public forests, was immediately followed by unbridled license in the enjoyment of the newly conceded rights.

In the popular mind the forest was a.s.sociated with all the abuses of feudalism, and the evils the peasantry had suffered from the legislation which protected both it and the game it sheltered, blinded them to the still greater physical mischiefs which its destruction was to entail upon them. No longer under the safeguard of the law, the crown forests and those of the great lords were attacked with relentless fury, unscrupulously plundered and wantonly laid waste, and even the rights of property in small private woods ceased to be respected. [Footnote: "Whole trees were sacrificed for the most insignificant purposes; the peasants would cut down two firs to make a single pair of wooden shoes."--Michelet, as quoted by Clave. Etudes, p. 24.

A similar wastefulness formerly prevailed in Russia, though not from the same cause. In St. Pierre's time, the planks brought to St. Petersburg were not sawn, but hewn with the axe, and a tree furnished but a single plank.] Various absurd theories, some of which are not even yet exploded, were propagated with regard to the economical advantages of converting the forest into pasture and plough-land, the injurious effects of the woods upon climate, health, facility of internal communication, and the like. Thus resentful memory of the wrongs a.s.sociated with the forest, popular ignorance, and the cupidity of speculators cunning enough to turn these circ.u.mstances to profitable account, combined to hasten the sacrifice of the remaining woods, and a waste was produced which hundreds of years and millions of treasure will hardly repair.

In the era of savage anarchy which followed the beneficent reforms of 1789, economical science was neglected, and statistical details upon the amount of the destruction of woods during that period are wanting. But it is known to have been almost incalculably rapid, and the climatic and financial evils, which elsewhere have been a more gradual effect of this cause, began to make themselves felt in France within three or four years after that memorable epoch. [Footnote: See Becquerel, Memoire sur les Forets, in the Mem. de l'Academie des Sciences, c. x.x.xV., p. 411 et seqq.

Similar circ.u.mstances produced a like result, though on a far smaller scale, in Italy, at a very recent period. Gallenga says: "The destruction of the majestic timber [between the Vals Sesia and Sessera]

dates no farther back than 1848, when, on the first proclamation of the Const.i.tution, the ignorant boor had taken it for granted that all the old social ties would be loosened, and therefore the old forest-laws should be at once set at naught."--Country Life in Piedmont, p. 136.]

Increased Demand for Lumber.

With increasing population and the development of new industries, come new drains upon the forest from the many arts for which wood is the material. The demands of the near and the distant market for this product excite the cupidity of the hardy forester, and a few years of that wild industry of which Springer's "Forest Life and Forest Trees" so vividly depicts the dangers and the triumphs, suffice to rob the most inaccessible glens of their fairest ornaments. The value of timber increases with its dimensions in almost geometrical proportion, and the tallest, most vigorous, and most symmetrical trees fall the first sacrifice. This is a fortunate circuinritiinco for the remainder of the wood; for the impatient lumberman contents himself with felling a few of the best trees, and then hurries on to take his t.i.the of still virgin groves.

The vast extension of railroads, of manufactures and the mechanical arts, of military armaments, and especially of the commercial fleets and navies of Christendom, within the present century, has incredibly augmented the demand for wood, [Footnote: Let us take the supply of timber for railroad-ties. According to Clave (p. 248), France had, in 1862, 9,000 kilometres of railway in operation, 7,000 in construction, half of which is built with a double track. Adding turn-outs and extra tracks at stations, the number of ties required for a single track is stated at 1,200 to the kilometre, or, as Clave computes, for the entire network of France, 58,000,000. This number is too large, for 16,000 + 8,000 for the double track halfway = 24,000, and 24,000 x 1,200 = 28,800,000. In an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July, 1863, Gandy states that 2,000,000 trees had been felled to furnish the ties for the French railroads, and as the ties must be occasionally renewed, and new railways have been constructed since 1863, we may probably double this number.

The United States had in operation on the first of January, 1872, 61,000 miles, or about 97,000 kilometres, of railroad. Allowing the same proportion as in France, the American railroads required 116,400,000 ties. The Report of the Agricultural Department of the United States for November and December, 1869, estimates the number of ties annually required for our railways at 30,000,000, and supposes that 150,000 acres of the best woodland must be felled to supply this number. This is evidently an error, perhaps a misprint for 15,000. The same authority calculates the annual expenditure of the American railroads for lumber for buildings, repairs, and cars, at $38,000,000, and for locomotive fuel, at the rate of 10,000 cords of wood per day, at $50,000,000.

The walnut trees cut in Italy and France to furnish gunstocks to the American army, during our late civil war, would alone have formed a considerable forest. A single establishment in Northern Italy used twenty-eight thousand large walnut trees for that purpose in the years 1862 and 1863.

The consumption of wood for lucifer matches is enormous, and I have heard of several instances where tracts of pine forest, hundreds and even thousands of acres in extent, have been purchased and felled, solely to supply timber for this purpose. The United States government tax, at one cent per hundred, produces $2,000,000 per year, which shows a manufacture of 20,000,000,000 matches. Allowing nothing for waste, there are about fifty matches to the cubic inch of wood, or 86,400 to the cubic foot, making in all upwards of 230,000 cubic feet, and, as only straight-grained wood, free from knots, can be used for this purpose, the sacrifice of not less than three or four thousand well-grown pines is required for this purpose.

If we add to all this the supply of wood for telegraph-posts, wooden pavements, wooden wall tapestry-paper, shoe-pegs, and even wooden nails, which have lately come into use--not to speak of numerous other recent applications of this material which American ingenuity has devised--we have an amount of consumption, for entirely new purposes, which is really appalling.

Wooden field and garden fences are very generally used in America, and some have estimated the consumption of wood for this purpose as not less than that for architectural uses.

Fully one-half our vast population is lodged in wooden houses, and barns and country out-houses of all descriptions are almost universally of the same material.

The consumption of wood in the United States as fuel for domestic purposes, for charcoal, for brick and lime kilns, for breweries and distilleries, for steamboats, and many other uses, defies computation, and is vastly greater than is employed in Europe for the same ends. For instance, in rural Switzerland, cold as is the winter climate, the whole supply of wood for domestic fires, dairies, breweries, distilleries, brick and lime kilns, fences, furniture, tools, and even house-building and small smitheries, exclusive of the small quant.i.ty derived from the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of fruit-trees, grape-vines, and hedges, and from decayed fences and buildings, does not exceed TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY CUBIC FEET, or less than two cords a year, per household.--See Bericht uber die Untersuchung der Schweiz Hochgebirgswaldungen, pp. 85-89. In 1789, Arthur Young estimated the annual consumption of firewood by single families in France at from two and a half to ten Paris cords of 134 cubic feet.--Travels, vol. ii., chap. xv.

The report of the Commissioners on the Forests of Wisconsin, 1867, allows three cords of wood to each person for household fires alone.

Taking families at an average of five persons, we have eight times the amount consumed by an equal number of persons in Switzerland for this and all other purposes to which this material in ordinarily applicable.

I do not think the consumption in the North-eastern States is at all less than the calculation for Wisconsin. Evergreen trees are often destroyed in immense numbers in the United States for the purpose of decoration of churches and on other festive occasions. The New York city papers reported that 113,000 young evergreen trees, besides 20,000 yards of small branches twirled into festoons, were sold in the markets of that city, for this use, at Christmas, in 1869. At the Cincinnati Industrial Exhibition of 1873, three miles of evergreen festoons were hung upon the beams and rafters of the "Floral Hall."

Important statistics on the consumption and supply of wood in the United States will be found in a valuable paper by the Rev. Frederick Starr, Jr., in the Transactions of the Agricultural Society for--.

Of course, there is a vast consumption of ligneous material for all these uses in Europe, but it is greatly less than at earlier periods.

The waste of wood in European carpentry was formerly enormous, the beams of houses being both larger and more numerous than permanence or stability required. In examining the construction of the houses occupied by the eighty families which inhabit the village of Faucigny, in Savoy, in 1854, the forest inspector found that FIFTY THOUSAND trees had been employed in building them. The builders "seemed," says Hudry-Menos, "to have tried to solve the problem of piling upon the walls the largest quant.i.ty of timber possible without crushing them."--Revue des Deux Mondes, 1st June, 1864, p. 601.

European statistics present comparatively few facts on this subject, of special interest to American readers, but it is worth noting that France employs 1,500,000 cubic feet of oak per year for brandy and wine casks, which is about half her annual consumption of that material; and it is not a wholly insignificant fact that, according to Rentzach, the quant.i.ty of wood used in parts of Germany for small carvings and for children's toys is so largs, that the export of such objects from the town of Sonneberg alone, amounted, in 1853, to 60,000 centner, or three thousand tons' weight.--Der Wald, p. 68.

In an article in the Revue des Eaux et Forets for November, 1868, it is stated that 200,000 dozens of drums for boys aro manufactured per month in Paris. This is equivalent to 28,800,000 per year, for which 56,000,000 drumsticks are required, and the writer supposes that the annual growth of 50,000 acres of woodland would not more than supply the material. In the same article the consumption of matches in France is given at 7,200,000,000, and the quant.i.ty of lumber annually required for this manufacture is computed at 80,000 steres, or cubic metres--evidently an erroneous calculation.] and but for improvements in metallurgy and the working of iron, which have facilitated the subst.i.tution of that metal for wood, the last twenty-five years would have almost stripped Europe of her last remaining tree fit for these uses. [Footnote: Besides the subst.i.tution of iron for wood, a great saving of consumption of this latter material has been effected by the revival of ancient methods of increasing its durability, and the invention of new processes for the same purpose. The most effectual preservative yet discovered for wood employed on land, is sulphate of copper, a solution of which is introduced into the pores of the wood while green, by soaking, by forcing-pumps, or, most economically, by the simple pressure of a column of the fluid in a small pipe connected with the end of the piece of timber subjected to the treatment. Clave (Etudes Forestieres, pp. 240-249) gives an interesting account of the various processes employed for rendering wood imperishable, and states that railroad-ties injected with sulphate of copper in 1846, were found absolutely unaltered in 1855; and telegraphic posts prepared two years earlier, are now in a state of perfect preservation.

For many purposes, the method of injection is too expensive, and some simpler process is much to be desired. The question of the proper time of felling timber is not settled, and the best modes of air, water, and steam seasoning are not yet fully ascertained. Experiments on these subjects would be well worth the patronage of Governments in new countries, where they can be very easily made, without the necessity of much waste of valuable material, and without expensive arrangements for observation.

The practice of stripping living trees of their bark some years before they are felled, is as old as the time of Vitruvius, but is much less followed than it deserves, partly because the timber of trees so treated inclines to crack and split, and partly because it becomes so hard as to be wrought with considerable difficulty.

In America, economy in the consumption of fuel has been much promoted by the subst.i.tution of coal for wood, the general use of stoves both for wood and coal, and recently by the employment of anthracite in the furnaces of stationary and locomotive steam-engines. All the objections to the use of anthracite for this latter purpose appear to have been overcome, and the improvements in its combustion have been attended with a great pecuniary saving, and with much advantage to the preservation of the woods.

The employment of coal has produced a great reduction in the consumption of firewood in Paris. In 1815, the supply of firewood for the city required 1,200,000 steres, or cubic metres; in 1859 it had fallen to 501,805, while, in the meantime, the consumption of coal had risen from 600,000 to 4,320,000 metrical quintals. See Clave, Etudes, p. 212.

In 1869 Paris consumed 951,157 steres of firewood, 4,902,414 hectolitres, or more than 13,000,000 bushels, of charcoal, and 6,872,000 metrical quintals, or more than 7,000,000 tons of mineral coal.--Annuaire de la Revue des Eaux et Forets for 1872, p. 26.

The increase in the price of firewood at Paris, within a century, has been comparatively small, while that of timber and of sawed lumber has increased enormously.] I have spoken of the foreign demand for American agricultural products as having occasioned an extension of cultivated ground, which had led to clearing land not required by the necessities of home consumption. But the forest itself has become, so to speak, an article of exportation. England, as we have seen, imported oak and pine from the Baltic ports more than six hundred years ago. She has since drawn largely on the forests of Norway, and for many years has received vast quant.i.ties of lumber from her American possessions.

The unparalleled facilities for internal navigation, afforded by the numerous rivers of the present and former British colonial possessions in North America, have proved very fatal to the forests of that continent. Quebec became many years ago a centre for a lumber trade, which, in the bulk of its material, and, consequently, in the tonnage required for its transportation, rivalled the commerce of the greatest European cities. Immense rafts were collected at Quebec from the great Lakes, from the Ottawa, and from all the other tributaries which unite to swell the current of the St. Lawrence and help it to struggle against its mighty tides. [Footnote: The tide rises at Quebec to the height of twenty-five feet, and when it is aided by a north-east wind, it flows with almost irresistible violence. Rafts containing several hundred thousand cubic feet of timber are often caught by the flood-tide, torn to pieces, and dispersed for miles along the sh.o.r.es.] Ships, of burden formerly undreamed of, have been built to convey the timber to the markets of Europe, and during the summer months the St. Lawrence is almost as crowded with shipping as the Thames. [Footnote: One of these, the Baron of Renfrew--so named from one of the t.i.tles of the kings of England--built forty or fifty years ago, measured 5,000 tons. They were little else than rafts, being almost solid ma.s.ses of timber designed to be taken to pieces and sold as lumber on arriving at their port of destination.

The lumber trade at Quebec is still very large. According to an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, that city exported, in 1860, 30,000,000 cubic feet of squared timber, and 400,000,000 square feet of "planches."

The thickness of the boards is not stated, but I believe they are generally cut an inch and a quarter thick for the Quebec trade, and as they shrink somewhat in drying, we may estimate ten square for one cubic foot of boards. This gives a total of 70,000,000 cubic feet. The specific gravity of white pine is .554, and the weight of this quant.i.ty of lumber, very little of which is thoroughly seasoned, would exceed a million of tons, even supposing it to consist wholly of wood as light as pine.

The London Times of Oct. 10, 1871, states the exportation of lumber from Canada to Europe, in 1870, at 200,000,000 cubic feet, and adds that more than three times that quant.i.ty was sent from the same province to the United States. A very large proportion of this latter quant.i.ty goes to Burlington, Vermont, whence it is distributed to other parts of the Union.

There must, I think, be some error or exaggeration in these figures.

Perhaps instead of cubic feet we should read square feet. Two hundred millions of cubic feet of timber would require more than half the entire tonnage of England for its transportation.