30 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



TYPICAL YELLOW POPLAR GROWTH, WEST VIRGINIA 



While naturally the soil is very rich, when these mountain sides are 

 cleared of their covering of timber and shrubs and put under culti- 

 vation, they wash very rapidly, and while the farmer will have a 

 splendid crop of corn for two or three years, the torrential rains 

 soon play havoc with the land and it goes into abandonment, weeds 

 and brush. Thus for more than a century patches of land have been 

 successively cleared, cultivated and abandoned, and new limited a^eas 

 have been subjected to the same process of destruction. These ob- 

 servations pertain only to the narrow valleys and the hillsides imme 

 diately surrounding the lower levels of the mountains. Attacks of 

 this sort on the higher elevations are only isolated. 

 Natural Resources 

 The distinctive factors which give essential value to this moun- 

 tain region are the temperature and the temperate and healthful 

 climate; grand, picturesque and varied scenery; ample supply of 

 pure, cool water; abundant water power; soils that are generally 

 of good physical and chemical composition; a vast extent of forest, 

 principally consisting of hardwoods (of which perhaps fifty per 

 cent has been denuded only of its large, mature and highly valuable 

 woods and on which the young growth has started and is in good 

 physical condition) and mineral deposits of iron, copper, mica, talc, 

 gold, corundum, precious stones, kaolin and otlier clays .'ind bniWine; 

 stone. 



The general rock formation is not of volcanic origin but came in 

 remote ages from an upheaval incident to the shrinkage of the 

 earth's crust. The strata is very much involved. The rock consists 

 largely of bastard granite, intermixed with some sandstone, con- 

 glomerates, shale, slates and quartzites. The antiquity of this forma- 

 tion is so great that geologists are confused in determining its age. 

 However, it is definitely known that the Appalachian region is very 

 old in the earth's history. Within what the geologists regard as a 

 recent pei'iod of this history, a thick and extensive ice sheet covered 

 the northern portion of the United States and part of British 

 America, as it now covers Greenland. The ice gathered slowly, 

 moved forward, and retreated as glaciers do with changes of climate, 

 and after a long and varied existence melted away. This geological 

 history affected the larger portion of the United States but did not 

 reach the Appalachian region. This section was old in vegetation 

 when the entire northern portion of the present United States was a 

 barren waste. For untold centuries a flonderful variety of tree 

 growth has prevailed in this section, has aged, fallen into decay and 

 reproduced in kind. 



The Forest Service and Geological Survey reports from which the 

 writer is indebted for some of the data involved in this article, make 

 register of one hundred and thirty-seven species of trees, many of 

 which yield lumber and bark, as having their habitat in the lower 



TYPICAL WHITE ASH GROWTH. r:AST TENNESSEE 



