Large portions of these swamps have been worked a
second and some a third time, since located. At the present time
[1857] there is not an acre of original growth of swamp standing,
having all passed away before the resistless sway of the
speculator or the consumer." Beesley's "Sketch of Cape May" p.
197.
The great forest has long since been lumbered to death. The pines
were worked for tar, pitch, resin, and turpentine until for lack
of material the industry passed southward through the Carolinas
to Florida, exhausting the trees as it went. The Christmas demand
for holly has almost stripped the Jersey woods of these trees
once so numerous. Destructive fires and frequent cutting keep the
pine and oak lands stunted. Thousands of dollars' worth of cedar
springing up in the swamps are sometimes destroyed in a day. But
efforts to control the fires so destructive not only to this
standing timber but to the fertility of the soil, and attempts to
reforest this country not only for the sake of timber but as an
attraction to those who resort there in search of health or
natural beauty, have not been vigorously pushed.
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