ARBORICULTURE. 



23 



The World's Forests 



It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the 

 importance of the part filled by trees in the his- 

 tory of the earth or in the life and develop 

 ment of its human inhabitants. Ages before 

 man appeared as the chief actor on the world's 

 stage, great forests were in existence, taking 

 their part, whilst living, in the preparation of 

 the earth's surface for the "masterpiece of cre- 

 ation," and in death providing materials to be 

 laid away in nature's storehouse for the use of 

 man thousands of years afterwards. One can 

 only gauge the significance of these forests to us 

 by a consideration of what the state of civiliza- 

 tion might now have been without an adequate 

 supply of coal. There is scarcely an industry 

 which does not depend, directly or indirectly, 

 on this for its very existence. To it we are 

 indebted for our means of lighting, heating, 

 rapid means of transport by sea and by land ; 

 in fact, for almost all that constitutes modern 

 advance in civilization. Of the amount of coal 

 already consumed, statistics give us but a poor 

 idea. In the little island of Great Britain alone 

 the output of coal in the year 1903 amounted to 

 more than two hundred and thirty million tons ; 

 and when one considers what a mass of vege- 

 tation must have been pressed together to form 

 such a vast (although comparatively small) 

 quantity of coal, one begins to realize what 

 must have been the luxuriance of the forests 

 which produced it. Of the beauty of these 

 primeval forests one can but draw an imagi- 

 nary picture, but composed, as they were, of 

 Giant Equisetums, Tree Ferns, Cycads and 

 Lycopods, they must have presented a very 

 striking appearance. As yet, however, there 

 was no intelligent being to admire them; even 

 the bird-life of the forests was as yet absent. 

 Of the above plants, the Lycopods, with their 

 spreading branches rising sixty or seventy feet 

 into the air, were probably the most remark- 

 able, and the most unlike anything now exist- 

 ing. Very few of their present-day relatives, 

 the Club Mosses, rise above nine inches high. 

 During the ages which succeeded the carbonif- 

 erous period, many changes took place in the 



distribution of land and water and in the cli- 

 mate of the earth, and amidst these changes the 

 primeval forests passed away, and were in the 

 course of time replaced by trees of a higher 

 development, such as pines, firs, cypress and 

 palms, to which were later added leaf-bearing 

 plants similar to the oakS; beeches, birches, etc , 

 of our own day. As man did not appear on the 

 scene until the last great epoch in the world's 

 history, it is probable that he found trees differ- 

 ing little, if at all, from those now existing, and 

 was no doubt, in his earlier stages, dependent 

 to a greaf extent on the fruits and products of 

 the forest for his food. Experience, however, 

 must soon have taught him that these formed a 

 very poor and precarious means of existence, 

 and would naturally lead him to the practice 

 of agriculture, which has been the cause of so 

 much forest-destruction ever since. The most 

 striking instance in recent times of how vast 

 forests have given place to fields of food crops 

 is of course that seen in the United States. 

 The same thing, however, has been or is going 

 on in every other country Nothing struck me 

 more forcibly than this when traveling in West 

 Africa, where daily one encountered the skele- 

 tons of trees, standing or lying, where the bush 

 had been cleared and burnt, and the ground for 

 two or three years devoted to the cultivation 

 of yams, etc., and then again abandoned. 



When, however, agriculture had rendered 

 primeval man less dependent on the forests for 

 his food supply, he would still have to look to 

 them for fuel, and, even more than we have 

 to-day, for materials with which to make his 

 agricultural tools and hunting weapons. As he 

 learned to build houses, (he forests would be 

 the most natural source of supply of materials 

 for that purpose also. Each advance in civili- 

 zation brought new uses for timber. The in- 

 troduction of copper and iron as substitutes for 

 stone meant the consumption of vast quantities 

 of wood for smelting purposes, and proved in 

 many parts of the world a most potent factor 

 in the destruction of the forests. Ship-building 

 was another industry which called for large 



