CHAPTER XIII 

 HISTORY OF THE FOREST 



So many new problems have confronted the people of 

 this country that we are too likely to think that all our 

 difficulties are peculiar to our own conditions. Forestry 

 is commonly considered as a brand new theory all our own, 

 a theory which many think not needed or altogether im- 

 practicable. We forget that the countries of Europe were 

 at one time as "new" and as unsettled as our own, and 

 have since passed through the same stages of development 

 and many more besides. 



We look to our frontiers for our necessary supply of 

 timber and do not realize with what rapidity those fron- 

 tiers are becoming cut-over and settled regions or that a 

 time will come in no very distant future when the frontiers, 

 in the present sense of the word, will have ceased to exist. 

 The same was true in Europe, but the frontiers have long 

 ago disappeared and they have learned to produce their 

 timber like their other crops in the heart of the settled 

 region, and produce them successfully at a good profit 

 to the owners and to the state. It has long ceased to be 

 an experiment with them and is recognized as being abso- 

 lutely necessary to the country's welfare. A brief review 

 of that development in Germany, the most progressive of 

 the European states in that line, will aid us in getting the 

 proper view point for understanding our own conditions. 



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