RELATION OF FOKESTS TO TBE FARMER 



Nothing stands absolutely alone in itself and by itself. Every 

 created thing has its relations to other things and forces. Indeed, 

 the whole orderly procession of nature is the result of forces which 

 have become! mutually associated and inter-dependent. It sometimes 

 happens that the most obvious purposes are in reality the least 

 important. The forests furnish a striking example of this. If ask^d 

 to name their uses the first answer would almost certainly b: for 

 lumber and fuel. Yet in the eternal scheme these are the very least 

 of all the important purposes they subserve, and the results of these 

 uses are probably the least enduring of all which spring from the 

 forests. To obtain these utilities the trees, as a living body, must be 

 sacrificed. They cease to operate as a portion of any natural plan 

 the very moment they become either lumber or fuel. Not only so, but 

 in serving either of these purposes they compete with substances 

 which, to a greater or less extent, could be substituted for them. 

 In such functions trees are in strong contrast with themselves, when 

 we remember that as living things their uses are unique, and that 

 nothing which they do for the rest of creation could be so well done 

 by anything else. 



Without thought, we regard the earth as having been always tim- 

 ber-clad, until human energy opened the clearings in which crops 

 were to be produced. Such, however, is not the fact. All science is 

 in accord with the belief that forest trees, as we now know them, 

 are the end of a long line of plant life. When extensive areasj 

 emerged from the waves to become dry land, and at length the abode 

 of human beings, nothing of higher form than a rock moss or a 

 lichen was there to represent the vegetable kingdom. Indeed we are 

 driven to this conclusion by many arguments, and by none more forci- 

 bly than by the fact that soil capable of supporting a large- sized tree 

 did not exist. There was no soft substance into which the roots 

 could penetrate to fix the trunk in an erect position, or from which it 

 could draw the needed nourishment, which the air failed to supply. 

 Our large trees won their hold upon the earth only after lichens, 

 mosses and ferns and palms had preceded and prepared the way for 

 them. Even then there remained ages upon ages during which we 

 should have recognized among the stately forms no-ne of the familiar 

 trees of our own time. Whatever possibilities of lumber or fuel were 

 in the stick were to remain until the earth, largely through the agency 



(17) 



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