THE MISSION OF EUCALYPTUS 



By FLORENCE LILLIAN PIERCE, Secretary of the Forestry Society of California 



MAN'S ingenuity is wizard-like. 

 It has conquered earth, water, 

 and air. It has controlled war. 

 pestilence, and famine, yet the danger 

 attending the rapid depletion and the 

 foretold future exhaustion of the for- 

 ests has taxed more than the genius of 

 man. It has almost challenged nature. 



The present outlook of the country 

 from a forestry standpoint is appalling. 

 Civilization is steadily crowding into 

 the timber reserve ; commercialism is 

 denuding the hillsides of shade, warmth, 

 drainage, soil, and water supply, to ob- 

 tain merchantable lumber ; and the of- 

 ficial reports calmly state that unless 

 some means of prevention or cure is 

 taken, the forests will be exhausted in 

 the measurable future. 



The war debt can be paid, the gov- 

 ernment can levy a revenue to meet its 

 expenses, but the forests have no means 

 of conserving themselves, no natural 

 method of sure, immediate, or rapid re- 

 cuperation except through the assist- 

 ance of man. 



The forestry departments, national 

 and state, and the forestry societies, 

 have done much to arouse the country 

 to a realization of the approaching for- 

 estal crisis. The result has been a spurt 

 of economic forestry, so to speak. De- 

 nuded lands are being clothed with 

 young trees ; ugly scars left by forest 

 fires are being hiflden by sapling foli- 

 age ; where there has not been shade 

 enough for a humming-bird, miniature 

 forests are waving ; and the farmer who 

 has a patch of trees, just for fuel, has 

 grown conservative with his ax- 

 strokes. Yet alarming conditions have 

 been little bettered for immediate real- 

 ization, because the time required for 

 trees to mature to forestable age makes 

 the present planting practically noth- 

 ing but an impetus toward supplying 

 woodlands for posterity. 



3 ,. . . 



A wise proceeding ; but something 

 nuist be done to obtain results for us 

 as posterity's ancestors. The man who 

 is putting money in the bank for future 

 use must have present sustenance. To 

 conserve the forests for coming gen- 

 erations, there must be an immediate 

 timber supply to meet the present ex- 

 isting demands. 



The frenzied question has been and 

 is, "How shall we fulfil the demand?" 



The answer has come from the far- 

 ofif island of Australia. In 1856 she 

 sent us missionaries destined to become 

 the saviours of the nation, mission- 

 aries that are to have an unerring influ- 

 ence on the geological, geographical, 

 agricultural, industrial, and climatic 

 conditions of the golden state — the 

 eucalyptus trees, of Australian parent- 

 age, the adopted trees of California. 



Missionaries there are who have been 

 sent to far lands ; others have remained 

 in the home field ; but who has heard 

 of their being imported into this coun- 

 try? Yet it has been done, and re- 

 markable are the things which the euca- 

 lyptus missionaries are to accomplish, 

 and lasting are to be the results, for 

 they bid fair to replace the trees that 

 have been slaughtered ; to become a 

 substitute for much of the timber in 

 current commercial use ; to provide for 

 future needs of the present generation ; 

 and to furnish forests for generations 

 of descendants. 



With remarkable tenacity to life, 

 these trees rush in and grow where 

 other trees are helpless to root ; are cut 

 down, and again reproduce from the 

 hacked stumps. And therein lies the 

 wonderful secret of their remarkable 

 adaptability as a means of reforestation. 

 The second growth, contrary to the 

 habit of other trees to weaken in sec- 

 ond production, furnishes a better qual- 

 ity of wood than the first, and through 



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