6 North American Forests and Forestry 



the forest with its manifold productions. It 

 seems natural to begin by considering the charac- 

 teristics of the forests themselves, such as they 

 were before the hand of man wrought the vastly 

 changed conditions under which they now exist 

 In doing so we cannot think of delineating in de- 

 tail the botanical or physiographic phenomena of 

 this great form of plant life. He who would learn 

 of the different species of trees composing it, their 

 dendrological character, their manner of life and 

 growth, will have to look elsewhere for such infor- 

 mation. Nor will we have space to wax eloquent 

 about the beauty of our sylvan inheritance. Al- 

 though the esthetic point of view has its very im- 

 portant place in our relations to surrounding nature, 

 we cannot in this volume concern ourselves with 

 that aspect. What this initial chapter seeks to im- 

 press firmly upon the minds of such as may feel 

 inclined to follow the author through these pages 

 is simply this : the manner in which the various 

 trees are associated in the wilderness is not the 

 result of accident, but determined by complex, but 

 very definite, laws. If one had a perfect knowledge 

 of those laws he could predict with absolute cer- 

 tainty the number, species, and character of the 

 trees to be found in any given locality. And further : 

 the forest is not a thing that was made once and 

 remained the same ever after. It has grown and 

 develops as a whole, just as each individual tree 

 grows from infancy to old age. Again, this growth 

 and constant change takes place according to very 



