THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 13,i 



:ictly the condition prevailing in America at present according 

 to Arthur Xewton Pack, whose hook "Our \ anishing Forests" 

 descrihes the haste and waste with which we are destrt tying 

 our woodlands and make a strong plea for their greater con- 

 ser\ ation. Each year we use enough railroad ties to lay i 

 track li\e times around the earth at the equator, the wood 

 pulp used in the newspapers of our country annually wmild 

 make a strip of newspaper width half way to the sun, and 

 this does not include the paper used in books. Each year the 

 lumber i)roduced would build a double row of five-room 

 houses clear across the continent and back, rmd each }ear lire 

 destroys enough forest to build a double row of the same 

 houses from New York to Chicago. Even the props used in 

 coal mines call for two hundred million cubic feet of wood 

 annually. ~ Things have come to such a pass that we arc act- 

 uall\- im[)orting sawdust from Europe! l'\'w people realize 

 how varied the uses of wood are. The author says "We d<> 

 not have to go to the hunber-yard to buy wood. We buy it 

 in furniture stores, grocery stores, book stores and drug- 

 stores." Telegraph poles and toothpicks, barrels and crates, 

 buttons, and clothes-pins, crutches and golf-sticks, pencils and 

 rulers, paper and matches, paving blocks and spools, piling 

 and shoe-pegs, tanl)ark and excelsior, fence-posts and fuel all 

 make a iieaxy di-ain on llie forests not to mention turpentine 

 and maple syrup, alcohf)!, drugs, dyes and many others. And 

 the demand is four times larger than the supply! We once 

 had eight hundred and fifty million acres in forest; now more 

 than half of this area has been cleared. The rest is di.s- 

 appearing at the rate of ten million acres annually. Con- 

 trary to general oj)inion, the land thus cleared is not use<l for 

 agriculture to any great extent. More than eighty million 

 acres of cut-over lands contain onlv second-rrrowth and cull 



