282 The Farm Woodlot 



and manage them to such advantage that their taxes are 

 considerably lightened, and in some cases done away with 

 altogether. Associations and other organizations seek 

 revenue in this manner, and many private owners realize 

 the value of the investment though they have not as yet 

 developed their systems to the same degree as the govern- 

 ment. 



Such is the status of the forests in many of the countries 

 of Europe, those which are the most progressive and most 

 prosperous. Some of the countries of southern Europe 

 have been slow to take up the work. They are mostly 

 the states that are backward in every form of development, 

 and they are now suffering from their lack of foresight. 

 All of them have their progress retarded by lack of timber 

 and are paying out large sums for wood imports, while their 

 own neglected forest areas, instead of yielding a revenue, 

 are lying idle and becoming more and more worthless from 

 year to year. In some localities, such as Greece and Spain, 

 the country has been reduced almost to desert conditions. 

 All of them have now realized their mistake and are spend- 

 ing large sums of money to place their forests on a paying 

 basis. They are the oldest countries of Europe in civiliza- 

 tion, and it would have meant hundreds of millions of dol- 

 lars to them if they had stopped this leak centuries ago. 



THE NORTH AMERICA EXPERIENCE 



Now let us turn for a moment to the development of 

 North America. When the first settlers came to this 

 continent on the Atlantic coast, they found an endless 

 forest extending from Canada to Florida. There was 

 practically no open land of any considerable extent. 



