THE TREE DOCTOR 



213 



lowed to be "harvested;" but the greatest of care was taken to 

 dig down all around it, and far enough away so that the very 

 last inch of timber at the base could be secured. England 

 depended on the imported supply and probably does yet. The 

 same, it appears, is substantially true of all the other civilized 

 nations. The masses in those countries, like the masses in 

 America, know that "the lumber comes from somewhere" and 

 that is the extent of their thought on the subject. It is esti- 

 mated that the forests of America have represented one-fourth 

 of the commercial values of the country. Consider, also, what 

 this "capital" the forest trees meant in the early days. 

 About all a man needed was an axe, a blanket, a gun and am- 

 munition, and he could go into the woods, build a home and 

 fence a farm. He had his fuel and he had stove-wood to sell as 

 soon as a community formed, and logs for the saw-mill to be 

 converted into cash. These hundreds of millions of acres of 

 timber are gone one-half, may be two-thirds wasted ! Think 

 of the billions of dollars "changing hands" in shipping, export- 



Photo 198 

 Don't Plant Hedges under Trees. 



