240 ELEMENTS OP AGRICULTURE 



destruction of much timber. Soft timber is principally 

 used in this process, and the amount of timber cut 

 annually is immense. But the great forest destroyer 

 is fire; each year vast areas of wooded land are burned 

 over, and most of the young timber destroyed. After 

 a forest has been cut, the young timber, if left undis- 

 turbed, will in twenty-five to forty years produce a new 

 forest, but after a fire there are few vouns: trees left 

 to grow. Each State has laws against starting forest 

 fires, imposing as penalties heav^ fines or imprisonment. 

 Unfortunately, the law is never enforced, and fires that 

 destroy thousands of dollars' worth of timber are some- 

 times started merely for the sake of obtaining a few 

 chestnuts. Besides destroying the young growth, forest 

 fires, which usually occur in the fall, leave the land, 

 comparatively bare to the action of winter rains, which 

 do much injury to the exposed soil. 



Lumber companies buy up great areas of forest land 

 merely for the lumber; they cut off the trees, caring 

 nothing for another crop, and after obtaining the lum- 

 ber often leave the land to the action of fire and water. 

 Under the present system of management the forests 

 of the United States will certainly be destro} T ed in a 

 comparatively few years, and the next generation will 

 have to begin to grow trees as a regular crop. Conserva- 

 tive estimates show that at the present rate of destruc- 

 tion the forests of the United States will not last more 

 than fifty years. 



224. Tree-Growing for Profit. — Forestry among 

 other things teaches us how to grow crops of trees for 

 market. By exercising the proper amount of care and 



