52 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



older countries of France and Italy and Greece, between eighty 

 per cent and ninety per cent of the forests are destroyed. Swe- 

 den and Finland are the only countries of the Old World that 

 still have as much as half of their original forests left. We are 

 passing through an age of rapid forest destruction. 



Some of this destruction was inevitable. Some was necessary 

 and right. It is good economy to clear tree growth from the 

 fertile lands to raise the world's foodstuffs. Today the world's 

 forests cover about seven and a half billion acres, or about one- 

 fifth of the earth's land area. It is hardly possible to conceive 

 of an area of that magnitude, but much of this so-called forest 

 in reality is composed of brush and low, scrubby timber such as 

 grows in the Arctic Circle. It will never be of importance to 

 man and the really productive forests of the world cover a 

 much smaller area about sixteen per cent of the land surface, 

 or three and two-tenths acres of forest land for every human 

 being in the world. 



Russia has the most extensive forests of any country. Next 

 come the British Empire, third Brazil, and fourth, the United 

 States. These countries together have within their borders 

 nearly two-thirds of the forest land of the world. The remain- 

 ing third is divided among more than fifty nations. 



The continents have been unequally placed from the stand- 

 point of the world's timber supply. North America has about 

 twenty per cent. Africa and Europe with their thickly inhabited 

 countries have only ten per cent apiece. South America and 

 Asia each have about twenty-eight per cent but the situation 

 in these two continents is entirely different, since Asia teems 

 with people and South America is very sparsely populated. 

 From the standpoint of national development the amount of 



