26 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



The innumerable insects, the rarer forms of wild life, big 

 and little, that find shelter and food within the forest, make 

 their own contributions by helping in seed fertilization and in 

 carrying seeds beyond the shadow of the mother tree. 



A forest then is essentially a partnership of trees, plants, and 

 animal life. It is a portion of the earth where trees, soil life, 

 animals, and plants are living in close association and have 

 come to depend in varying degrees on each other for their wel- 

 fare, even though in another sense they are often at war, one 

 with the other. One might think of them as friendly enemies. 

 Under forest conditions trees themselves are constantly waging 

 war with each other the large trees bully the little ones and 

 the little ones fight among themselves. The reason is evident. 

 In forest life, much as in human life, there are not enough of 

 life's necessary things to go around. There is only just so much 

 open sunlight above, and so much soil moisture and fertility 

 beneath, and only to the strongest and most vigorous trees the 

 rewards of the struggle fall. And, as in man's life, so in the 

 forest many contenders drop by the wayside and fail. They had 

 not the stuff to succeed. They were not well equipped for the 

 struggle, or they were handicapped by the many accidents that 

 life brings. 



To trace the growth of a forest from the time the first seeds 

 open until the trees grow old and decay is to tell the life story 

 of a tree community. And to reduce that life story to its utmost 

 simplicity one may imagine that a thick growth of pine and 

 maple and oak trees has been cleared of every tree for a mile 

 square within the heart of the forest. Fire too may have burned 

 over this area so fiercely that everything trees and seedlings 

 and even the seeds that lay in the ground had been destroyed. 



