WHAT THE FORESTS DO FOR US 11 



or would make a double row of frame dwellings, which 

 being placed ten feet apart would extend from New 

 York to San Francisco. As stated in the first chapter, 

 fully two-thirds of our population use wood as fuel, 

 and the 90,000,000 cords of fuel wood annually con- 

 sumed would make a stack of wood four feet high and 

 four feet wide running five times around the globe. 



Americans are generally recognized as being the great- 

 est newspaper and magazine readers in the world, and 

 this statement can be well believed when we realize the 

 amount of pulp wood which the voracious maw of our 

 paper plants requires each year. The enormous total 

 of 4,000,000 cords of wood is manufactured into paper 

 pulp ; which when turned into newspaper would cover 

 a half a million acres with a single thickness. In fact, 

 one daily paper in New York City consumes no less 

 than twenty-five acres of spruce forest for every Sunday 

 edition. 



Indirect Influences. In the first chapter brief men- 

 tion was made of the indirect influence exerted by the 

 forests; how the climatic extremes are moderated; how 

 the force of hot dry winds in the prairie country is 

 checked and that the spongelike action of the forest 

 cover is of great value in controlling run-on 3 and dimin- 

 ishing floods. In some parts of the country the influ- 

 ences of a cover of woody growth on run-off may be 

 more important than its value as a source of timber. 

 For instance, in parts of California where a continuous 

 flow of water is necessary for irrigation, the presence 

 of chaparral thickets upon the steep mountain slopes is 

 sufficient to prevent the rapid run-off of the winter 

 rains and to hold the water in the soil that it may be 

 gradually released when needed. As a consequence, 

 this scrubby growth, though not producing timber, is 



