CHAPTER LXX 

 THE FOREST IN RELATION TO MAN 



415. Forest products. Man depends in many ways upon 

 masses of trees growing together as forests. It is from the 

 trees that we get one of the most useful of materials — wood. 

 This is utilized in hundreds of ways, from the making of tooth- 

 picks and tool handles to the timbering of mines or the making 

 of stock for newspapers. All human habitations have some wood 

 in their composition, and probably most people live in houses 

 built almost entirely of wood. Every home has furniture made 

 at least in part of wood ; and in every industry, and in every 

 office, furniture and appliances made of wood are used. 



In the railroad business millions of dollars are spent every year 

 for the ties upon which the rails are laid. Similar amounts are spent 

 upon telegraph poles and fence posts, although these are coming to 

 be replaced by reenforced concrete and other materials. In shipping 

 goods of all kinds from place to place millions of feet of lumber are 

 used up, in the form of packing cases and boxes and trunks. 



In addition to the wood obtained from the trees these plants 

 furnish us with charcoal, turpentine, pitch, wood alcohol, sugar, and 

 various gums and resins. From tropical trees we obtain rubber and 

 quinin. To some extent the dye logwood is holding its own against 

 the anilin blacks, and during the Great War dyewoods took on a 

 renewed importance, because of the changes in the chemical industries. 

 Bark is taken from certain trees, especially the hemlock, to be used, 

 for the tannin it contains, in the tanning of leather. 



The use of wood as fuel is coming to be restricted more and more, 

 as we find it more profitable to burn coal, gas, oil, etc., and to use the 

 wood for other purposes. But every forest and every wood lot produces 

 annually large quantities of wood that cannot be used in the making 

 of paper or of other useful things, and this may well be burned. 



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