PERIODICAL LITERATURE 851 



persistence and unrelenting energy required for pioneer work? To 

 such an extent has the clearing and settlement proceeded that the 

 forest over a large part of the world is conquered. More than this, 

 it is exterminated beyond any possible chance of natural recovery. 

 The turn of the road has come and it is now important for civilization 

 to preserve and restore the forest instead of struggling against it. As 

 an example, Europe, where the greatest change has taken place, has 

 out of a total land area of ^Yi billion acres barely ToO.OOO acres in 

 forest and two-thirds of this small area is concentrated in Russia and 

 Finland. In fact, Europe reached the point several centuries ago which 

 practically all civilized countries of the world have now come to realize : 

 i.e., that there is a limit beyond which clearing of forest areas can not 

 go, no matter what the density of the population may be, with- 

 out proving detrimental to progress itself. Hope is not left out of 

 the reckoning, for it is stated that there is enough accessible actual 

 and potential forest land, not suitable for agriculture, in civilized coun- 

 tries to produce under proper management timber enough to supply 

 indefinitely the world's great demand. The new movement toward 

 rational management of the forest is then noted and its direction and 

 importance pointed out. The managed forests of the future will be 

 no less an important factor in civilization from the ethical and geo- 

 graphical point of view because the economic principles at present 

 applied to the raising of agricultural crops are becoming more and more 

 necessary for the forest. The new forest may be different from the 

 original forest, but its influence on and usefulness to mankind will 

 remain unchanged irrespective of its economic metamorphosis. 



Thus the author concludes a fascinating bit of epic prose in which 

 the primeval forest is vitalized as a living force in its influence upon 

 the plastic primitive races of man in their development from civiliza- 

 tion's dawn until the present. And he brings it home, that, as the 

 forest played so important a part in the past, modern man, in the 

 light of present knowledge and advantages, should consciously mold 

 this natural wealth to meet the permanent and distant needs of present 

 and future civilizations and enable the story of the forest in later 

 times to form an epic on even a grander scale than the influence of its 

 past. E. R. HoDSON. 



Zon, Raphael. Forests and Human Progress. Geogr. Review, 10 :i ;•,<»- ific. 

 Sept., I'JL'O. 



