THE WORLD'S FOREST SUPPLY 21 



89,000,000 cubic feet used for distillation. 

 30,000,000 cooperage. 

 25,000,000 veneers. 



Besides which there were used over 



15,000,000,000 shingles for roofs. 

 3,111,157,000 laths. 



3,500,000 telegraph and telephone poles. 



Something like 3,000 square miles of forest are required 

 annually to provide the American railways with sleepers. 



These particulars bring out the startling fact that the 

 amount used for fuel in the United States and it has been 

 put down as a very conservative estimate is 64 per cent, 

 of the total timber cut, which is estimated at about 

 20,000,000,000 cubic feet; this will be gradually much 

 reduced as the coal mines of the country become developed. 

 The amount of lumber used per head of population in the 

 United States is 34 cubic feet, the average for the whole 

 of Europe is only 5 cubic feet. 



At a meeting of the Hardwood Timber Association (who 

 cut about one-third of the total timber supply of the 

 United States) at Memphis, Tenn., in 1906, a conservative 

 estimate placed before the meeting stated that there was 

 not enough timber standing to continue commercially for 

 more than twenty years. 



A recent leaflet of the United States Department of 

 Agriculture calls attention to the waning hardwood supply, 

 and although the existing supplies of softwoods are being 

 rapidly decreased, both the States and Canada possess 

 resources of that class of timber on the Pacific slope 

 which is only beginning to come into the market ; but these 

 regions possess no hardwoods, so there is the unpleasant 

 outlook to be faced that when the existing supplies of hard- 

 woods are used up there are no others to take their place. 



