Abstract of Lecture at Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. All things considered, the best timber the English Kingdom furnished was from the English oak. Its strength and durability had passed into proverb, and it had come to be regarded as synonymous with English naval dominion the world over because from this oak were built the long-lived ships that upheld England's honor in all seas and in the face of all foes. Yet, as a matter of fact, fair, impartial trial had shown that the American white oak was equal in nearly all respects to the British, and in some qualities was better. Thus what very little strength it lacked in comparison with the English was more than compensated for by increased length of straight pieces.

Our timber has a special value, because there are so many kinds which grow here and nowhere else. Our white pine and redwood, our hickories and black walnut, our enduring locust of the East and matchless sugar pine of the West were our own exclusive property, the special gift of our own goodly heritage. The same might be said of the tulip tree and the Osage orange. Beside the mere fact that we do possess such treasures, there should also rise the question: What use shall we make of them? Shall we recklessly exhaust or shall we husband such resources and make them the permanent handmaids to our civilization that less valuable kinds have been to that of Europe?

We have but little idea what quantities of lumber are used by comparatively small industries. Thus a recent report informs us that yearly we consume 100,000 cords of soft maple for shoe pegs; for lucifer matches, 390,000 cubic feet of pine go; while lasts, boot-trees and tool handles call for 1,000,000 cords of birch; making our bricks burns up 3,000,000 cords more. To string the telegraph wires of the country upon, three hundred thousand new poles are required annually.

Under the general designation of naval stores we have tar, turpentine, pitch and resin. These are powers in the land whose value was recog-nized along the Hudson as early as the first of the last century by the British naval officers stationed there. The value of these exports from our country in 1802-3 was $460,000. During the war of 1812 this sank as low as $31,000. Before our recent war the value of this class of exports was $1,203,537. During the war of 1864-5 it fell to $126,333. Immediately on the return of peace in 1865-66 it rose with a bound to $1,651,586. Of course most of these exports-were from the Southern States. Such statistics show many things, and among their lessons is the one teaching us the terrible prostration of national energy which follows in the wake of a war. In 1878-9 the value of these naval stores exported was $2,260,586. From 1802 up to 1852 the average value of forest exports from this country has been about twice as great as that from the ocean.

To-day the hides from the pampas of South America and the prairies of Texas are made into leather by hemlock bark from the hillsides of Pennsylvania. We can hardly dignify collection of sumac leaves with the name of a forest industry, yet if we compare our own (home) collected leaves with the Sicilian, though the latter do contain more tannic acid, the comparison is very largely in our favor, because of the cheapness of preparing our own leaves.

In the United States we have about forty species of oak. If we were to draw a line of distinction between those of the Eastern slope and those of the Western slope, we might say the former were taller and straighter than those of the West.

Taking the whole group of oaks, we might regard them as nearly evenly divided into white and black oak species. General characteristics of these groups would be that the former (white) matured their acorns in one year, and produced good, compact wood; while the latter (black) usually required two years to mature their fruit, and had wood which was darker colored and much more porous. The chestnut tree is one which has many claims upon us - its value as a timber, its rapidity of growth, its tendency to sprout when once cut down, the uses to which the young sprouts can be put - all combine to mark this as one of our most valuable trees.

It may seem incredible, but Italy uses as food 6,400 tons of chestnuts a year. There almost as much attention is paid to the production of choice varieties of chestnuts as we pay here to the production of improved peaches and pears.

Among the trees introduced here is the so-called English walnut. This tree is now largely cultivated in California for its fruit, but it should be remembered that it has, in an exceptionably favorable location within what is now the city limits, produced fruit for many years. Of course it could not be counted upon here, but on the "Eastern Shore" of Maryland it might be regarded as a certain crop.

Passing by a great mass of important facts as this abstract must, the lecturer stated that the following States, so far as their lumbering product were concerned ranked, as among all those of the Union thus:

Supposing this were put in another way, and Oregon and Washington together as representing that northwest whose forests are said to be inexhaustible, and we will have as the value of the two for 1880, $3,765,205, as against $22,457,359 for our own State alone. In other words, we were destroying our forests almost six times as fast as Oregon and Washington combined. Judging the future by the past, in much less than half a century, under present processes, our State will be stripped of her forest growth, and estimating the demand upon the (Pacific) Northwest as five times as great as that now upon this State, we should have thirty times the demand made upon Oregon and Washington that is made now. And this starts the question, how long would these forests be a hope to the nation because they were "inexhaustible?" There is no flattering unction to be laid to our souls unless we begin to plant forests, at least as fast as we cut them down. If we do not, the want of timber will lead to business stagnation, and to shame, that we could have been so shortsighted.