Returning now to a consideration of the consumption of wood materials in general we can
summarize with the statement that our consumption at present of all kinds, sizes, and description,
including the enormous firewood supplies of a round 180,000,000 cords, can not fall short of
25,000,000,000 cubic feet of forest grown material, counting in the waste in the woods and the
mills and loss by fire. That means a consumption of 50 cubic feet per acre of forest, or 360 cubic
feet per capita.*

Considering that in. the well-kept forests of Germany, where reproduction is secured by



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The largest part of this consumption is for firewood. According to the census of 1880 the cousnmption of
firewood must then have been 280 cubic feet per capita (figuring 100 cubic feet solid to the cord), and this amount
has i)robably not been reduced during the last decade. This firewood is not, as in older countries, made up of
inferior material— brush and small fagots — but is, to a large extent^ split body wood of the best class of trees.
FOREST FIRES.
13.^



skillful management, the total growth per acre, brash and branch wood included, averages only 55
cubic feet, it needs no argument to j)rove that we are cutting yearly far more than can be
reproduced, especially when we consider that while in Germany all inferior material is utilized,
we use even for firewood purposes good-sized material, body wood, hardly inferior to saw timber,
so that the comparison should be rather with the production of what the Germans call "derbholz,"
including all material over 3 inches, which averages hardly 3vS cubic feet per acre and year.
