SHERMAN] NATURE— THE SUPREME PROVIDER 199 



the needs of man, she sets the earth's machinery in motion to 

 convert these trees into coal, which she deposits in the cellars of 

 the earth. Then she remembers that man cannot get along with- 

 out wood, so she grows more forests. 



Water, she has provided in abundance, and knowing its habits as 

 it rushes down from mountain streams and hillside brooks, and the 

 damage it may do, if not arrested, in its journey from sky to soil 

 and along the rivers to the sea, she has distributed her crop of trees 

 where they, together with the soil, will hold the flow in check. 

 How Nature's patience must have been tried by man — after all her 

 forethought, to see him cut down these ver\' trees, leaving the 

 watersheds barren wastes and the flood-waters bringing greater 

 disaster every year ! 



Nature also made provision to remedy the damage done by 

 forest fires. She developed a tree — the lodgepole pine — whose 

 habits actually require the intense heat of fire to enable it to scatter 

 its seeds. And, still more remarkable, the soil these seeds actually 

 need for rapid growth is the mineral ash left after the forest fires 

 have btimed themselves out. 



Whether or not Nature could foresee the great war in which her 

 people ha\'e been engaged, it is certain that she provided the where- 

 withal for carrying on the war. Besides wood, which ranks with 

 food and munitions, there are iron, copper, and other minerals 

 required in modem warfare. Some of these resotirces are used in 

 enormous quantities, and others not less important are so jjrecious 

 that they are referred to in terms of ounces. Platinimi is in this 

 class. I often wonder what the result wovild have been if Nature 

 had not recognized the relative value of the supplies she stored upon 

 the earth. Suppose, for instance, that the supply of coal and 

 platiniun had been reversed. 



Soon, geologically speaking, after Nature laid in her supply of 

 coal she thought of flowers, and these she finally scattered broad- 

 cast ever\-where. Then, as suitable companions for the flowers, 

 birds and insects came into her mind. The insects seem to spring 

 up naturally from not much of anything, but the birds had an 

 ancestry in common with the reptiles of millions of years ago. 

 Whatever Nature's purpose was in bothering with these unsightly, 

 stupid creatures and the monster dinosaurs, is puzzling. Maybe 

 she was experimenting. And when she saw how much these huge 

 creatures ate, no doubt she was concerned about the food-supply 

 holding out. Possibly they had ser\-ed a purpose; or Nature 



