THli PARANA PINK FORKSTS OF 1;RAZ1I. 157 



The most valuable product of the base story of the forest is the 

 famous Brazilian or Paraguay tea {Ilex paraguensis ) . This small tree 

 is botanically related to. and closely resembles in appearance, the south- 

 ern holly of our country. In the virgin forest it is suppressed, and 

 it is only when the forest is cleared of its underljrush and sometimes 

 of all or a part of its second, third, and fourth story trees that it reaches 

 full development. It seems to do best under the rather thin canopy of 

 the Parana pine. For small areas, it is the most valuable forest product 

 of the region, for it is made to yield continuous crops of leaves. Sad 

 to relate, it is the only forest product that is under management. Scat- 

 tered throughout the lumbering region are farmers with small areas of 

 the tea, or herva matte, as it is called locally, growing under the pine. 

 So far I have obtained no reliable figures concerning the production of 

 matte. There is authority for the statement that there are no less than 

 50,000,000 kilos consumed annually by the people of southern Brazil, 

 Argentina. Uruguay, Paraguay. Chile, and parts of Peru and "Bolivia. 

 The largest part of this comes from the pine forests. 



In the above I have attempted to describe briefly the forest and its 

 present use. With the exception of the matte, the forest is being ex- 

 ploited without any regard to its conservation. The stumpage price 

 is low, amounting to 50 cents per thousand board feet. All the accessi- 

 ble timber is in the hands of private owners, and is being cut or burned 

 to make way for the cattlemen and the farmer. I am told, however, 

 there are large inaccessible areas still under the control of the Govern- 

 ment of the difterent States, and perhaps before this is opened by rail- 

 ways, the National or State governments will have taken steps to form 

 National or State forests, to be lumbered with a view to their conserva- 

 tion rather than destruction. 



There are reasons to believe that the Parana pine region will play 

 a role similar to that played by the white pine region of our Great 

 Lakes. Like the white-pine region, the forests of Parana pine lie to the 

 northeast of a great prairie country that needs lumber for its develop- 

 ment. Heretofore this jirairie region has depended on coniferous woods 

 of the North Temperate region, chiefly southern yellow pine. Today 

 the greatest lumber-producing region in the world is the vellow-pine 

 region of the southern part of the United States. \\'ith an estimated 

 stand of 386 billion feet and an annual cut of 15 billion feet, it is vearly 

 drawing on its forest capital. Is there any sane economic reason why 

 this region should be called upon to carry timber thousands of miles 

 to supply lumber to a region which has a forest at its back door con- 

 taining 200 billion feet, or about one-half as much timber as the vellow- 



