44 ARBOR DAY ITS HISTORY AND OBSERVANCE. 



and for mining purposes, we shall have a train 100,000 miles in length, or 

 long enough to reach four times around the globe. The weight of these 

 forest products would be enough to load 480,000 ships of 1,000 tons each. 



When we see thus what a vast amount of material of various kinds 

 is taken from our forests every year, we have a most convincing proof 

 of their value. We see at a glance how indispensable they are to our 

 welfare, how many industries they must sustain, how many comforts 

 and conveniences they must provide for all. 



The importance of the forests and their usefulness to us may be 

 shown, not only by such figures as we havf yust given, which indicate 

 their total product, but in a contrasted way by considering some of 

 what may be called the nuthought-of uses of "the forest, because they 

 are concerned with articles individually so small and insignificant. 



A toothpick, for instance, is a little thing, the merest sliver of wood, 

 yet it is reported that one factory uses 10,000 cords of wood annually in 

 the production of these splints. 



Shoe pegs are small affairs, yet a single factory sends 40,000 bushels 

 of them to Europe yearly, besides what it disposes of at home. 



A spool is of small account to us when emptied of the thread which 

 lias been wound upon it, yet there are several factories which use each 

 from 1,800 to 3,500 cords of wood every year in making these little arti- 

 cles, and in one factory 150 men are said to be employed in their man- 

 ufacture. Thousands of acres of birch trees have been bought at one 

 time by some of our thread manufacturing companies, for the sole pur- 

 pose of securing a supply of spools. 



Who thinks much of the little friction match, as he uses it to light his 

 lamp or his fire and then throws it away! But a single factory, it is 

 said, makes 60,000,000 of these little things every day, using for this 

 purpose 12,000 square feet of the best pine timber. 



It will help us also to understand how much we are indebted to the 

 forests when we find that we consume $12,000,000 worth of lumber every 

 year for the packing-boxes alone which are required simply for the 

 transportation of our various commodities from the producers to those 

 who use them, and are then destroyed. 



In what has been said now about the products of the forests and the 

 benefits which they confer upon us, only a few out of many things have 

 been mentioned. Nothing has been said of the gums and resins and 

 spices which they afford, and which are of so much service to us. What 

 a loss would it be to us, for instance, if we were to be deprived of india 

 rubber and gutta-percha, or of the resin and turpentine of our pine 

 trees, yielding us a product annually valued at $8,000,000. What could 

 take their place? How many uses we have for them, uses many of 

 .which seem indispensable. How important to us also is the bark of 

 many trees. We are dependent upon it for our leather. We can not 

 put on a shoe or walk the streets without being reminded of our indebt- 

 edness to the trees. How many valuable dyestuffs, also, and how many 

 healing medicines are obtained from the bark, as well as from the leaves 



