Part 33 (1/2)
These facts are interesting as ill.u.s.trating the mult.i.tude of often obscure conditions upon which the life or vigorous growth of smaller organisms depends. Particular species of truffles and of mushrooms are found a.s.sociated with particular trees, without being, as is popularly supposed, parasites deriving their nutriment from the dying or dead roots of those trees. The success of Rousseau's experiments seem decisive on this point, for he obtains larger crops of truffles from ground covered with young seedling oaks than from that filled with roots of old trees. See an article on Mont Ventoux, by Charles Martins, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Avril, 1863, p. 626.
It ought to be much more generally known than it is that most, if not, all mushrooms, even of the species reputed poisonous, may be rendered harmless and healthful as food by soaking them for two hours in acidulated or salt water. The water requires two or three spoonfuls of vinegar or two spoonfuls of gray salt to the quart, and a quart of water is enough for a pound of sliced mushrooms. After thus soaking, they are well washed in fresh water, thrown into cold water, which is raised to the boiling point, and, after remaining half an hour, taken out and again washed. Gerard, to prove that ”crumpets is wholesome,” ate one hundred and seventy-five pounds of the most poisonous mushrooms thus prepared, in a single month, fed his family _ad libitum_ with the same, and finally administered them, in heroic doses, to the members of a committee appointed by the Council of Health of the city of Paris. See FIGUIER, _L'Annee Scientifique_, 1862, pp. 353, 384. See _Appendix_, No.
31.
It has long been known that the Russian peasantry eat, with impunity, mushrooms of species everywhere else regarded as very poisonous. Is it not probable that the secret of rendering them harmless--which was known to Pliny, though since forgotten in Italy--is possessed by the rustic Muscovites?
[264] _Physikalische Geographie_, p. 486.
[265] _Origin of Species_, American edition, p. 69.
[266] Writers on vegetable physiology record numerous instances where seeds have grown after lying dormant for ages. The following cases, mentioned by Dr. Dwight (_Travels_, ii, pp. 438, 439), may be new to many readers:
”The lands [in Panton, Vermont], which have here been once cultivated, and again permitted to lie waste for several years, yield a rich and fine growth of hickory [_Carya porcina_]. Of this wood there is not, I believe, a single tree in any original forest within fifty miles from this spot. The native growth was here white pine, of which I did not see a single stem in a whole grove of hickory.”
The hickory is a walnut, bearing a fruit too heavy to be likely to be carried fifty miles by birds, and besides, I believe it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to Vermont.
”A field, about five miles from Northampton, on an eminence called Rail Hill, was cultivated about a century ago. The native growth here, and in all the surrounding region, was wholly oak, chestnut, &c. As the field belonged to my grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this ground there sprang up a grove of white pines covering the field and retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a single oak or chestnut tree. * * * There was not a single pine whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to have been planted on this spot. The fact that these white pines covered this field exactly, so as to preserve both its extent and its figure, and that there were none in the neighborhood, are decisive proofs that cultivation brought up the seeds of a former forest within the limits of vegetation, and gave them an opportunity to germinate.”
[267] Quaint old Valvasor had observed the subduing influence of nature's solitudes. In describing the lonely Canker-Thal, which, though rocky, was in his time well wooded with ”fir, larches, beeches, and other trees,” he says: ”Gladsomeness and beauty, which dwell in many valleys, may not be looked for there. The journey through it is cheerless, melancholy, wearisome, and serveth to temper and mortify over-joyousness of thought. * * * In sum it is a very wild, wherein the wildness of human pride doth grow tame.”--_Ehre der Crain_, i, p. 136, b.
[268] Valvasor says, in the same paragraph from which I have just quoted, ”In my many journeys through this valley, I did never have sight of so much as a single bird.”
[269] Smela, in the government of Kiew, has, for some years, not suffered at all from the locusts, which formerly came every year in vast swarms, and the curculio, so injurious to the turnip crops, is less destructive there than in other parts of the province. This improvement is owing partly to the more thorough cultivation of the soil, partly to the groves which are interspersed among the plough lands. * * * When in the midst of the plains woods shall be planted and filled with insectivorous birds, the locusts will cease to be a plague and a terror to the farmer.--RENTZSCH, _Der Wald_, pp. 45, 46.
[270] England is, I believe, the only country where private enterprise has pursued sylviculture on a really great scale, though admirable examples have been set in many others on both sides of the Atlantic. In England the law of primogeniture, and other inst.i.tutions and national customs which tend to keep large estates long undivided and in the same line of inheritance, the wealth of the landholders, and the difficulty of finding safe and profitable investments of capital, combine to afford encouragements for the plantation of forests, which nowhere else exist in the same degree. The climate of England, too, is very favorable to the growth of forest trees, though the character of surface secures a large part of the island from the evils which have resulted from the destruction of the woods elsewhere, and therefore their restoration is a matter of less geographical importance in England than on the Continent.
[271] The preservation of the woods on the eastern frontier of France, as a kind of natural abattis, is also recognized by the Government of that country as an important measure of military defence, though there have been conflicting opinions on the subject.
[272] Let us take the supply of timber for railroad ties. According to Clave (p. 248), France has 9,000 kilometres of railway in operation, 7,000 in construction, half of which is built with a double track.
Adding turnouts 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. As the schoolboys say, ”this sum does not prove;” for 16,000 + 8,000 for the double track halfway = 24,000, and 24,000 1,200 = 28,800,000.
According to Bigelow (_Les etats Unis en 1863_, p. 439), the United States had in operation or construction on the first of January, 1862, 51,000 miles, or about 81,000 kilometres of railroad, and the military operations of the present civil war are rapidly extending the system.
Allowing the same proportion as in France, the American railroads required 97,200,000 ties in 1862. The consumption of timber in Europe and America during the present generation, occasioned by this demand, has required the sacrifice of many hundred thousand acres of forest, and if we add the quant.i.ty employed for telegraph posts, we have an amount of destruction, for entirely new purposes, which is really appalling.
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 demand for wood for small carvings and for children's toys is incredibly large. Rentzsch states the export of such objects from the town of Sonneberg alone to have amounted, in 1853, to 60,000 centner, or three thousand tons' weight.--_Der Wald_, p. 68. See _Appendix_, No. 33.
The importance of so managing the forest that it may continue indefinitely to furnish an adequate supply of material for naval architecture is well ill.u.s.trated by some remarks of the same author in the valuable little work just cited. He suggests that the prosperity of modern England is due, in no small degree, to the supplies of wood and other material for building and equipping s.h.i.+ps, received from the forests of her colonies and of other countries with which she has maintained close commercial relations, and he adds: ”Spain, which by her position seemed destined for universal power, and once, in fact, possessed it, has lost her political rank, because during the unwise administration of the successors of Philip II, the empty exchequer could not furnish the means of building new fleets; for the destruction of the forests had raised the price of timber above the resources of the state.”--_Der Wald_, p. 63.
The market price of timber, like that of all other commodities, may be said, in a general way, to be regulated by the laws of demand and supply, but it is also controlled by those seemingly unrelated accidents which so often disappoint the calculations of political economists in other branches of commerce. A curious case of this sort is noticed by CERINI, _Dell' Impianto e Conservazione dei Boschi_, p. 17: ”In the mountains on the Lago Maggiore, in years when maize is cheap, the woodcutters can provide themselves with corn meal enough for a week by three days' labor, and they refuse to work the remaining four. Hence the dealers in wood, not being able to supply the demand, for want of laborers, are obliged to raise the price for the following season, both for timber and for firewood; so that a low price of grain occasions a high price of building lumber and of fuel. The consequence is, that though the poor have supplied themselves cheaply with food, they must pay dear for firewood, and they cannot get work, because the high price of lumber has discouraged repairs and building, the expense of which landed proprietors cannot undertake when their incomes have been reduced by sales of grain at low rates, and hence there is not demand enough for lumber to induce the timber merchants to furnish employment to the woodmen.”
[273] 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 fire wood in Paris. In 1815, the supply of fire wood for the city required 1,200,000 steres, or cubic metres; in 1859, it had fallen to 501,805, while, in the mean time, the consumption of coal had risen from 600,000 to 432,000,000 metrical quintals. See CLAVe, _etudes_, p. 212.
I think there must be some error in this last sum, as 432 millions of metrical quintals would amount to 43 millions of tons, a quant.i.ty which it is difficult to suppose could be consumed in the city of Paris. The price of fire wood has scarcely advanced at all in Paris for half a century, though that of timber generally has risen enormously.
[274] In the first two years of the present civil war in the United States, twenty-eight thousand walnut trees were felled to supply a single European manufactory of gunstocks for the American market.
[275] Among the indirect proofs of the comparatively recent existence of extensive forests in France, may be mentioned the fact, that wolves were abundant, not very long since, in parts of the empire where there are now neither wolves nor woods to shelter them. Arthur Young more than once speaks of the ”innumerable mult.i.tudes” of these animals which infested France in 1789, and George Sand states, in the _Histoire de ma Vie_, that some years after the restoration of the Bourbons, they chased travellers on horseback in the Southern provinces, and literally knocked at the doors of her father-in-law's country seat.
[276] In the _Recepte Veritable_, Palissy having expressed his indignation at the folly of men in destroying the woods, his interlocutor defends the policy of felling them, by citing the example of ”divers bishops, cardinals, priors, abbots, monkeries, and chapters, which, by cutting their woods, have made three profits,” the sale of the timber, the rent of the ground, and the ”good portion” they received of the grain grown by the peasants upon it. To this argument, Palissy replies: ”I cannot enough detest this thing, and I call it not an error, but a curse and a calamity to all France; for when forests shall be cut, all arts shall cease, and they which practise them shall be driven out to eat gra.s.s with Nebuchadnezzar and the beasts of the field. I have divers times thought to set down in writing the arts which shall perish when there shall be no more wood; but when I had written down a great number, I did perceive that there could be no end of my writing, and having diligently considered, I found there was not any which could be followed without wood.” * * ”And truly I could well allege to thee a thousand reasons, but 'tis so cheap a philosophy, that the very chamber wenches, if they do but think, may see that without wood, it is not possible to exercise any manner of human art or cunning.”--_[OE]uvres de_ BERNARD PALISSY, p. 89.
[277] Since writing the above paragraph, I have found the view I have taken of this point confirmed by the careful investigations of Rentzsch, who estimates the proper proportion of woodland to entire surface at twenty-three per cent. for the interior of Germany, and supposes that near the coast, where the air is supplied with humidity by evaporation from the sea, it might safely be reduced to twenty per cent. See Rentzsch's very valuable prize essay, _Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der Volkswirthschaft_, cap. viii.
The due proportion in France would considerably exceed that for the German States, because France has relatively more surface unfit for any growth but that of wood, because the form and geological character of her mountains expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents, and because at least her southern provinces are more frequently visited both by extreme drought and by deluging rains.
[278] _etudes sur l'economie Forestiere_, p. 261. Clave adds (p. 262): ”The Russian forests are very unequally distributed through the territory of this vast empire. In the north they form immense ma.s.ses, and cover whole provinces, while in the south they are so completely wanting that the inhabitants have no other fuel than straw, dung, rushes, and heath.” * * * ”At Moscow, firewood costs thirty per cent.
more than at Paris, while, at the distance of a few leagues, it sells for a tenth of that price.”
This state of things is partly due to the want of facilities of transportation, and some parts of the United States are in a similar condition. During a severe winter, six or seven years ago, the sudden freezing of the ca.n.a.ls and rivers, before a large American town had received its usual supply of fuel, occasioned an enormous rise in the price of wood and coal, and the poor suffered severely for want of it.
Within a few hours of the city were large forests and an abundant stock of firewood felled and prepared for burning. This might easily have been carried to town by the railroads which pa.s.sed through the woods; but the managers of the roads refused to receive it as freight, because the opening of a new market for wood might raise the price of the fuel they employed for their locomotives.
Hohenstein, who was long professionally employed as a forester in Russia, describes the consequences of the general war upon the woods in that country as already most disastrous, and as threatening still more ruinous evils. The river Volga, the life artery of Russian internal commerce, is drying up from this cause, and the great Muscovite plains are fast advancing to a desolation like that of Persia.--_Der Wald_, p.
223.
The level of the Caspian Sea is eighty-three feet lower than that of the Sea of Azoff, and the surface of Lake Aral is fast sinking. Von Baer maintains that the depression of the Caspian was produced by a sudden subsidence, from geological causes, and not gradually by excess of evaporation over supply. See _Kaspische Studien_, p. 25. But this subsidence diminished the area and consequently the evaporation of that sea, and the rivers which once maintained its ancient equilibrium ought to raise it to its former level, if their own flow had not been diminished. It is, indeed, not proved that the laying bare of a wooded country diminishes the total annual precipitation upon it; but it is certain that the summer evaporation from the surface of a champaign region, like that through which the Volga, its tributaries, and the feeders of Lake Aral flow, is increased by the removal of its woods.
Hence, though as much rain may still fall in the valleys of those rivers as when their whole surface was covered with forests, a less quant.i.ty of water may be delivered by them since their basins were cleared, and therefore the present condition of the inland waters in question may be due to the removal of the forests in their basins.
[279] Rentzsch _(Der Wald, etc._, pp. 123, 124) states the proportions of woodland in different European countries as follows:
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