THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF FORESTRY IN 

 THE UNITED STATES. 



By Mary F, Haggerty. 



IN primeval times, ages befOi"e the discovery of the Western 

 Hemisphere, there was but one forest on the American 

 Continent, extending from sea to sea over one third of all the 

 land. But during the glacial period when North America was 

 covered with ice as far south as the latitude of Cincinnati, all 

 the vegetation under and adjacent to this icy mantle was 

 killed, and though growth started again after the ice melted 

 and disappeared and though the land was once more occupied 

 by softwoods and hardwoods, the continent was no longer 

 covered by a stretch of continuous woodland. There were now 

 three main forests — the great eastern forest which embraced 

 all the land east of the Mississippi, and in some places much 

 west of it; the forest of the Rocky Mountain Region and the 

 smaller mountain ranges of the great basin ; and the Pacific 

 Coast Forest all of which united in the northern part of the 

 continent to form a subarctic forest belt. 



In the eastern forest the trees grew up much the same as 

 before, but in the other forests were many diffrent species, due 

 no doubt to the changes in soil, in climate or in the nature of 

 the trees. On the Pacific Coast eighty different species of 

 coniferous trees were found while all the trees grew taller than 

 the eastern species, had thicker crowns and trunks, and grew 

 in belts along the slopes of the mountains, instead of in clust- 

 ers in ravines along the mountain sides. All of these three 

 forest areas formed what has been called the "Virgin Forest." 



One of the most important factors in the life of a forest 

 is the reproductive power of its trees, dependent primarily on 

 the quantity of seeds which each tree produces. Though the 

 quantity is the first consideration there are so many more sig- 

 nificant ones, that a tree may bear numerous seeds, and yet 

 never reproduce itself. Among these considerations are first, 



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