CHAPTER VI 



TREE STUDY AND CIVIC FORESTRY 



Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts 

 descend upon me ? WALT WHITMAN 



How foolish does man appear to be in destroying the mountain forests, 

 for thereby he deprives himself of wood and water at the same time. 

 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT 



It is undoubtedly true that more pine timber has been destroyed by fire 

 than the lumbermen have ever cut. GREEN 



The problem. The annual growth of all the forests of the 

 United States is 7,000,000,000 cubic feet of wood, while our 

 yearly consumption amounts to more than 20,000,000,000 

 cubic feet. In addition to this, since 1870 forest fires, for the 

 most part preventable, have caused a yearly loss of fifty lives, 

 $50,000,000 w^orth of lumber, and a destruction, even greater, 

 of all young growth and of soil fertility by the burning of the 

 vegetable mold of the forest floor. Floods in the lower Missis- 

 sippi alone during 1912, due to unwise and uncivic deforesta- 

 tion, in the main, caused great loss of life, extreme privation, 

 and damage estimated at $82,187,670. While this torrential 

 run-off is flooding the lower river valleys, millions of woodland 

 springs and even wells back in the foothills and mountains 

 are going dry. From one to two thousand million tons of the 

 finest and richest soil enough to bury Rhode Island from 

 one to two feet deep is being washed yearly from the farms, 

 where it may be worth a dollar a ton, into our harbors, where 

 it costs millions to dredge it out of the way. 



Increasing population and consumption of wood, decreasing 

 forests, inadequate control of forest fires, increased washing 



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