CHAPTER 14 

 OTHER GIFTS OF THE FOREST 



Of all things a useless soul and a useless acre are the most useless. 



J. T. ROTHROCK. 



LUMBER is only one of the many gifts the forests have to 

 offer. Long before boards had ever been thought of, the early 

 peoples of the world had learned to make use of many other 

 products of the forest. In the tropics they built tlieir homes of 

 palm leaves and made spears and arrows of the hard, heavy 

 woods. Throughout the world they had learned to hollow 

 logs for canoes. It may be that with dry sticks man first made 

 fire his servant. 



From the leaves and bark and fruit of forest trees come 

 many of the well known medicines that man through the long 

 ages has used to cure his ills. Even today witch doctors and 

 medicine men of the primitive tribes obtain most of their medi- 

 cal stores directly from the trees. Rubber, that tremendously 

 important substance, was first derived from 'tapping' trees dis- 

 covered in the tropical forests of the Amazon and the great 

 bulk of 'chicle' used for making chewing gum is bled from 

 tall zapote trees that grow in the dark jungles of Central 

 America and southern Mexico. 



Two products of the forest were of service to man long 

 before the making of paper from paper pulp and even before 

 the lumber industry came into being. These forest products 



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