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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



THE COLUMN OF SMOKE BY DAY HERALDS DESTRUCTIOX AXD WASTE 



It may be the accumulated growth of a century which is disappearing. It may be the waste and lappage which the lumbermen 

 have left behind, with young trees and all possibilities of a fu ure forest. In either case it is economic loss. 



have now been assembled an area of five-fold extent. In 

 one state, Arkansas, purchases have been designed mrely 

 to consolidate the Government holdings on the Ozark 

 and Arkansas National Forests which were created 

 from the public domain. Until recently purchases have 

 been restricted to the White Mountains in New Hamp- 

 shire and Maine, the Appalachians south of Pennsyl- 

 vania, and the Ozarks of Arkansas, but the commission 

 has recently authorized the purchase of 74,000 acres in 

 Pennsylvania. 



The original program called for the purchase of 6,- 

 000,000 acres, one-third of which has now been ac- 

 quired. In the White Mountains the purchase program 

 is about one-half completed, there having been acquired 

 about 450,000 acres out of a total designated area of 

 950,000 acres. 



The larger portion of the lands which have been ac- 

 quired have had the timber cut off, or at least some of 

 the best timber has been cut, but a number of fine 

 stands have been secured within which there has never 

 been the sound of the lumberman's ax ; and there is 

 valuable timber on much of the other lands in addition 



to much timber of low grade. There are some large 

 tracts which have been badly injured by repeated fires. 

 Their value for watershed protection had been greatly 

 impaired through the destruction of the absorbent forest 

 hivmus and the resulting erosion ; and likewise their ca- 

 pacity for growing timber had been reduced. In places 

 the protection which has been given by the government 

 has already resulted in a wonderful change in some of 

 these burned over lands. There are also small areas of 

 open land which at one time were fields on farms. The 

 owners found such lands were too steep for permanent 

 and profitable cultivation. Many of these little moun- 

 tain clearings are so deeply gullied that it will be years 

 before the gullies will fill up and the surface again be- 

 come smooth and the original fertility of the soil restor- 

 ed. Most of these open lands are gradually restocking 

 in trees by seed from the nearby forests. There are also 

 small and relatively insignificant areas of barren lands, 

 largely mountain tops and sub-Alpine lands, which were 

 acquired in purchasing larger tracts of which they form- 

 ed a part. But on the whole, 95 per cent of the more 

 than two million acres is productive forest land or is 



