74 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



But gradually as populations increased, the forests, through 

 cutting and fire were pushed farther, back and wood, especially 

 in the centers of civilization, grew scarce. So trees began to 

 take on value and forest ownership came into existence. Na- 

 tions and states set aside large areas within which timber cut- 

 ting was unlawful man was beginning to think of fostering 

 tree growth and protecting trees from destruction. This early 

 effort, really more of a puzzled groping than actual effort, was 

 the world's first foreshadowings of forestry. 



Time passed and the more thickly settled nations began to 

 find that protection alone was not enough. It was very neces- 

 sary to protect, but to insure a future wood supply it was also 

 necessary to learn how to grow trees on lands already cut over. 

 Nature unaided proved an uncertain ally. Men found that 

 sometimes nature herself replaced the forests they had taken 

 away and sometimes not. They saw, too, that in place of the 

 valuable forests they had cut, nature often brought in trees for 

 which man had little use. 



It all seemed a very complex, very perplexing problem, and 

 men became eager to learn how woodlands should be treated 

 that they might produce continuous and still greater quan- 

 tities of wood. Already necessity existed to improve on nature's 

 husbandry because more timber was becoming needed each 

 year. Yet each year less forest soil remained to produce it since 

 cities and farms now occupied much land that had once been 

 forested. Through this science of the forests through forestry 

 men hoped to learn some means of helping nature produce 

 on one acre what formerly she had produced on two or three. 

 He hoped also to replace the less valuable species with woods of 

 greater usefulness. 



