WHAT IS FORESTRY? 3 



fall is too slight to raise field crops successfully, the 

 forester claims that such areas should not be allowed 

 to lie idle, but should be made to yield repeated crops 

 of timber, and aside from supplying the locality with 

 this useful material, the owners will receive an income 

 from their property, otherwise unproductive. 



The civilization of North America is practically 

 founded on wood and at present we are using our 

 timber three times as fast as it grows. Over half our 

 population live in wooden houses and two-thirds of our 

 citizens use wood for fuel. Every boy realizes that our 

 household furniture is almost entirely made of wood; 

 that our newspapers and magazines are composed largely 

 of wood pulp, and that the railroads upon which our 

 foodstuffs and clothing are transported have not yet 

 found a satisfactory substitute for the wooden railroad 

 tie. Indeed wood is indispensable; but unfortunately 

 through reckless cuttings and forest fires over half the 

 original forest has been destroyed. When the present 

 virgin forests have disappeared we shall be compelled to 

 use small knotty second growth timber of vastly inferior 

 quality and a timber famine manifesting itself in high 

 prices and inferior forest products will be felt. 



Even could substitutes be found for wood products' 

 a certain amount of the country would have to remain 

 under forest cover, for it is generally believed that if 

 less than twenty per cent of the land area of a continent 

 is covered with forest growth in time the country be- 

 comes arid. The effects of forest cover in improving the 

 climate by checking the force of harmful winds and in 

 controlling the run-off of spring rains have been men- 

 tioned and a theory has been recently advanced that 

 rains in the interior of a continent are largely dependent 

 upon the presence of forests lying across the track of the 



