■ '«■•" .»J»N?i^A ««P«BMlHBBS«S»?lll!!jlBi. 

 I'hnt(i!/raph by H. S. Graves 

 The trees of France are proving tlii-inselves silent deti-iidirs ot the nation. After America entered 

 the war one of the first demands on the Western Front was timber for piling, because new docks and 

 extensions to old docks had to be constructed in haste to accommodate rapidly arriving troop ships 

 and ships loaded with ammunition, military equipment, and food. Fortunately, the silver fir forests 

 of France correspond with what American forests of white pine were in the past. At once, under 

 the work of the American Forestry Engineers, these forests yielded straight and flexible trunks from 

 sixty to ninety feet long, in the necessary quantities 



Phi,to;iraph h,, U. S. Graves 

 A silver fir forest in tlie .lura Mountains, from which the American Forestry Engineers have cut 

 the old ripe timber, using all possible care to leave the young trees uninjured and the whole in con- 

 dition for prosperous future development. Logging conditions in these forests are much like those in 

 the Adirondacks, except that the trees are of larger size. Dense stands of mature silver fir, especially 

 in the Vosges Mountains, arouse the enthusiasm of even those American lumberjacks who have 

 worked among the great trees of the Pacific Coast 

 420 



