ABSTRACT
Since there is nothing which seems more fatally to threaten a weakening, if not a dissolution of the strength of this famous and flourishing nation, than the sensible and notorious decay of her wooden walls … For it has not been the late increase in shipping alone, the multiplication of Glass-Works, Iron-Furnaces, and the like, from whence this impolitick diminution of our Timber has proceeded; but from the disproportionate spreading of Tillage, … tempted, not only to fell and cut down, but utterly extirpate, demolish, and raze, as it were, all those many goodly Woods, and Forests, which our more prudent Ancestors left standing … this devastation is now become Epidemical, that unless some favourable expedient offer it self, and a way be seriously, and speedily resolv’d upon, for a future store, one of the most glorious,
and considerable Bulwarks of this Nation, will, within a short time, be totally wanting to it. … Truly, the waste, and destruction of our Woods, has been universal.
