CHAPTER X 

 HAE VESTING THE FOREST CROP 



THINK of a tree three hundred and fifty feet tall, 

 thirty-five feet in diameter, containing 1,000,000 board 

 feet of lumber, enough to make three hundred dwell- 

 ing houses. Think of a tree that was a straight young 

 sapling long before Athens was a power in the 

 ^iEgean Sea, and was a strong, giant in the prime of life 

 wher Eome fell. In fact the oldest of these forest mon- 

 archs have watched the seasons change during a lifetime 

 of thirty-five centuries. The eucalyptus, a native of 

 Australia, can exceed the giant sequoia in height, but 

 there is no tree which can compare with it in bulk, age 

 or grandeur. This is only one of many startling facts 

 about the American forest. Regarding the extent and 

 content of the original forest, mention has been made 

 previously, but of the richness, the complexity, the 

 beauty of the virgin forest of America too much cannot 

 be said. John Muir in one of his wonderful eulogies 

 of the American wilderness describes how the soil was 

 lately turned by the plows of God ; how the vast glaciers 

 that ground their way down from the North, leveling 

 mountains and filling up valleys, mixed the soils in 

 order that the tree, the most highly developed form of 

 the vegetable kingdom, might have the proper seedbed 

 upon which these splendid forests could be matured. 

 In describing the original forests the superlative must 

 be often used, for it is true that in the woods of North 

 America we have the largest, oldest forest trees the 

 world possesses. We have the greatest variety as well. 



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