The Forest Industries 71 



a generous share. Much of the hard wood of 

 the country is still annually wasted, for want of a 

 market. Many thousands of logs that ought to 

 bring good prices and be made into furniture and 

 other manufactured articles are used as fuel, or, 

 worse, burnt up by the settlers in clearing simply 

 to get rid of them. With increased transportation 

 facilities such waste will largely cease, and the 

 hard-wood forest will for a long time to come 

 increase as a factor in the industrial life of the 

 country. This may be a good place to call atten- 

 tion to the fact that we are naturally far richer in 

 lumber trees than our European friends. This is 

 true of both soft and hard woods. In Europe there 

 may be about a score of trees which are of commer- 

 cial importance. In the United States and Canada 

 there are nearly five hundred indigenous trees. 

 Of these about a hundred are of such quality and 

 occur in such numbers that they may fairly be 

 classed among the industrially useful ones. This 

 list is constantly increased as trees heretofore 

 neglected come into use and gain a place in the 

 lumber markets. This happened, for instance, to the 

 sweet-gum (Liquidambar styraciflud) within quite 

 recent years. The same thing is true of the cotton- 

 wood (Populus monilifera), which was formerly con- 

 sidered useless, but is now largely cut for packages. 

 Whatever may be true of the hard-wood industry, 

 the supply of soft-wood lumber, which for the 

 present, at least, is of the greater economic im- 

 portance, cannot last longer than half a century at 



