The Romance of Plant Life. Elliot George Francis Scott
never-heard-of port in Norway, all over the world. You may see her discharging a cargo of deal plank, through the clumsy square holes in her stern, in a forgotten Fifeshire village, in Madagascar, in China, or in the Straits of Magellan. All her life she is engaged in this work, and her life is an exceedingly long one, to judge from the Viking lines on which she is built.
Moreover, her work is done so economically that it used to be much cheaper to use her cargo in Capetown than to utilize the beautiful forests of the Knysna and King Williamstown.
But there are not wanting signs that the forests of Norway, of Sweden, and even those of the United States, are doomed.
It is said that seven acres of primeval forest are cut down to supply the wood which is used up in making the paper required for one day's issue of a certain New York journal. What a responsibility and a source of legitimate pride this must be to the journalists! Let us hope that the end justifies the means.
Boulger calculates that in 1884 all the available timber from 4,131,520 acres of Californian Redwood was used in making the sleepers of the railways then existing in the United States.
He finds that no less than 18,000,000 acres of forest are necessary to keep up the supply of sleepers for the old lines and to build new ones.
So that, if we remember the wood required for paper, firewood, and the thousand other important requisites of civilized man, the United States must soon exhaust her supply and import wood.
Then will come the opportunity of British North America. The Southern forest of Canada, which extended for 2000 miles from the Atlantic to the head of the St. Lawrence, has indeed gone or is disappearing into pulpwood and timber, but there is still the great Northern forest from the Straits of Belleisle to Alaska (4000 miles long and 700 miles broad), and in addition the beautiful forests of Douglas Spruce and other trees in British Columbia covering 285,000 square miles.
It is the wood-pulp industry which is at present destroying the Canadian forests. The penny and halfpenny papers, and indeed most books nowadays, are made of paper produced by disintegrating wood: it is cheap, and can be produced in huge quantities; nevertheless it is disquieting to reflect that probably nineteen-twentieths of the literary output of the twentieth century will be dust and ashes just about the same time (some fifty years) that the writers who produced it reach the same state.23
Yet, considering the amount daily produced to-day, the future readers of fifty years hence who are now in their cradles, may consider this a merciful dispensation of Providence.
One very curious use of wood may be mentioned here. Near Assouan, on the First Cataract of the Nile, one discovers broken granite or syenite needles, which had been intended by the ancient Egyptians for monuments. Where the broken pillar lies, there are rows of wedge-shaped holes cut in the rock.
They used to drive in wedges of dry wood and then wet them with water. The expansion of the wood split the rock, though this is hard granite or syenite. Very often the process failed because the stone cracked. The same method is said to be still used in some quarries.
The destruction of the forest is really necessary. Most of the corn land and rich pasture of the world has been at one time forest. It could scarcely be such fertile soil if it had not been for the many years during which leaf-mould fell on it, and the roots broke up and penetrated the subsoil below. Canada, Russia, and the United States are now passing through the same experience as that of Great Britain in the time of the Romans, Saxons, and Danes.
But there is terrible waste by fire.
When the trees become dry and withered in the height of summer in either India or the United States, some careless tramp may throw aside a lighted match. If a fire once starts, it spreads with enormous rapidity; great clouds of smoke roll over the surrounding country, and every village sounds the alarm. Everybody rushes to help and try to stop the conflagration, or if too late hurriedly saves whatever he can get of his possessions. His log hut and all the accumulations of years of saving may be turned into a heap of ashes in a very few minutes.
But the crackling of the leaves and the flaming twigs and scorching bark make such a volume of fire that nothing which man can do is of any avail.
Of course every beast, every bird and insect is in the greatest possible danger.
This is how a fire in New Zealand has been described by Mr. William Satchell: —24
"For a while it seemed that the battle must go to the wind, the fiery monster withdrew, lay hidden, roaring angrily in the dry heart of the woods; then insidiously he stretched forth his glittering arms, first one, then another, and locking the shuddering trees in an irresistible embrace, sprang once again erect. In an instant the whole bush from edge to edge became a seething, rocking mass of flames.
"'Fire! Fire!'
"Then, insignificant no longer, transfigured rather beyond all living possibilities of loveliness, the bush stood revealed to its centre. It became less a fire than an incandescence, waxing in brilliance to the point when, as it seemed, it must perforce burst into indistinguishable flame. Every leaf and twig of that fairy forest was wrought and hammered in virgin gold, every branch and trunk was a carved miracle of burnished copper. And from the golden leaves to the golden floor, floatingly or swiftly, there fell an unceasing rain of crimson flame petals, gorgeous flame fruits. Depth after depth stood revealed, each transcending the last in loveliness. And as the eye sought to penetrate those magic interiors there seemed to open out yet farther vistas, beyond belief beautiful, as of the streets of a city incorruptible, walled and towered, lost in the light of a golden incomparable star."
"'Fire! Fire!'
"In the face of that vision of glory the cry rang out with all the ineptitude and inappropriateness of the human weakling. On one side the titanic forces of nature, inexorable, eternal; on the other the man, frail of body, the creature of an hour, matching himself against them.
"'Fire! Fire!'
"Sheltering his face from the insufferable heat, the Swede hammered madly at the solid house-door. At the back, now utterly unapproachable, the kitchen, the roof, and a part of the main wall were already in flames. A few minutes – five at the most – would complete the demolition of the house. To right and left the great trees one after another went off like rockets, the roar of their burning foliage shaking the very earth. A deafening crashing of falling timber came at intervals from the bush beyond."
In some countries the destruction of the forests has had a very serious effect on the climate. The rain which falls upon a forest is partly absorbed by the leaves, and but a very small part of it is carried off by burns and streams: most sinks down into the forest soil, and is only gradually given back again after being taken in by the tree roots and evaporated by the leaves.
But bare hills denuded of wood allow most of their rain to rush down to the sea in dangerous spates of the rivers and burns, and then the ground becomes afterwards very dry and burnt up. There are very many countries now barren and desolate because they have been robbed of the beautiful forests which once covered the springheads and mountain valleys.
Perhaps Palestine is one of the worst instances. But it is when we remember Babylon, Nineveh, and all the cities of the coast of Asia Minor, as they were even a thousand years ago, and compare their present barren, desolate condition, that the full meaning of mountain forests becomes clear.
Where once there were thriving, prosperous cities with enormous populations, now the goats graze or a few miserable peasants carefully husband the water of a few miserable streams. The same thing has happened in Mauritius, in the Cape Verde and Canary Islands, and in many other places.
But men are now beginning to see how dangerous the destruction of forests may be, and in many countries and especially in Britain, new forests are being planted. Perhaps in time we may grow in Britain so much timber that we shall gain something like £32,000,000 a year, which is what we spend on imported woods.
At present plover, whaups, snipe, and grouse, or useless red deer, inhabit what was once the Caledonian forest, and every thousand acres of such land nowadays supports perhaps one shepherd and half a gamekeeper. But when it is planted
Compare the report by the Society of Arts.