BIRDS AND ALL NATURE. 



ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY. 



Vol. VI. 



OCTOBER, 1899. 



No. 3 



FORESTS. 



John M. Coulter, Ph.D. 



Head Professor of Botany, University of Chicago. 



'O RESTS have always been ad- 

 mired, and in ancient times 

 the}' were often considered 

 sacred, the special dwelling- 

 places of gods and various 

 strange beings. We can easily understand 

 how forests thus affected men. There is a 

 solemnity about them, a quiet grandeur, 

 which is very impressive, and the rustling of 

 their branches and leaves has that myste- 

 rious sound which caused the ancients to 

 people them with spirits. We still recog- 

 nize the feeling of awe that comes in 

 the presence of forests, although w'e have 

 long since ceased to explain it by peopling 

 them with spirits. 



Once forests covered all parts of the earth 

 where plants could grow w-ell, and no 

 country had greater forests than North 

 America. When America was discovered, 

 there was a huge, unbroken forest from the 

 Atlantic west to the prairies. Now much 

 of this has been cut away, and we see only 

 small patches of it. Men must use the for- 

 est, and still they must save it, and they are 

 now trying to find out how W\Q.y may do 

 both. 



Forests are sometimes almost entirely 

 made up of one kind of tree, and then they 

 are called " pure forests." Pine and beech 

 forests are examples of this kind. More 

 common with us, however, are the " mixed 

 forests," made up of many kinds of trees, 

 and now^iere in the world are there such 

 mixed forests as in our Middle States, where 

 beech, oak, hickory, maple, elm, poplar. 



gum, walnut, sycamore, and many others 

 all grow together. 



Probably the densest forests in the world 

 are those in the Amazon region of South 

 America. So dense are they that hardly a 

 ra\' of light ever sifts through the dense 

 foliage, and even at noon there is only a dim 

 twilight beneath the trees. The tallest for- 

 ests are the Eucalyptus forests of Australia, 

 where the trees rise with slender trunks to 

 the height of four or five hundred feet. 

 But the largest trees in the world, w^hen we 

 consider both height and diameter, are the 

 giant "redwoods" (Sequoias) of the Pa- 

 cific coast. All concede, however, that the 

 most extensive, the most varied, and the 

 most beautiful forests of the world are those 

 of the Atlantic and Middle States. 



Perhaps it is well to understand how a 

 tree lives, that we may know better what a 

 forest means. The great roots spread 

 through the soil, sometimes not far from the 

 surface, at other times penetrating deepl3^ 

 The young root tips are ver)- sensitive to the 

 presence of moisture, and turn towards it, 

 no matter in what direction it may carry 

 them. In penetrating the soil the sensitive 

 root tips are turned in every direction by 

 various influences of this kind, and as a re- 

 sult, when the root sj'stem becomes old, it 

 looks like an inextricable tangle. All this 

 tangle, however, but represents the many 

 paths that the root tips followed in their 

 search for the things which the soil con- 

 tains. 



Roots are doina: two things for the tree: 



