Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1892 — DESTROYING OUR FORESTS. [ARTICLE]

DESTROYING OUR FORESTS.

Ex-Senator Edmunds Writes a Letter on This Subject. Assistant Secretary Wttlits, of the Department of Agriculture, presided at the meeting of the American Forestry Asso lation. Ex-Senator Edmunds sent a letter expressing his regret at his n - ability to be present, in which he said: The subject is of unusual importance to the future welfare of all our countrymen. I have seen In Europe much of the evil of the stripping of the hill and mountain sides of their forests, jand I have seen in our temperate and well-watered climate of Vermont how great has been the loss from timber and wood cutting merely for the tlmbor and wood, without reference to the inevitable consequences in reference to floods, washing away of soils, drying up of springs, and turning the face of otherwise bountiful Nature into deserts. The devastations of a dozen years can hardly bo repaired in half a century, and so every energy of reason and persuasion ought to be brought to bear upon the public intelligence to avert the evils that so seriously threaten large parts of the republic from the destruction of the forests.