Children's Department 



Derated to imparting information about trees, woods and forests to boys and girls so that they may grow to know 

 how necessary trees arc to the health, wealth and future of their country. 



By Bristow Adams 



FORESTRY AND WHAT IT MEANS 



FORESTRY is the science of making trees serve 

 man's uses continuously. The Forester deals 

 with the woods as mass and not as single trees. 

 He looks on this mass of trees in a good deal the same 

 way that a boy or girl looks at a piece of moss, not tak- 

 ing account of frond or stem, but viewing the growth 

 as a whole. 



Not only does the Forester think in large terms as to 

 trees over a great area, but he uses the same large 

 thoughts in respect to time. It is nothing to him to plant 

 a forest growth a hundred years ahead of the time when 

 it will be cut. While the farmer plans for a season and 

 the orchardist for a decade, or a ten-year period, the 

 Forester plans for a century or more. 



Yet, in order to know how a large mass of trees must 

 be handled for such a long period of time, the Forester 

 has to know the behavior of individuals, because he, of 

 all men, can least afford to make mistakes. He has to 

 know how each tree grows, and how it will act in rela- 

 tion to other trees. He must know the best use to which 

 each tree may be put, and also how and where it should 

 grow to fit this use. He must know which trees will 

 grow fastest and thus give him quick returns, and which, 

 even though growing slowly, will produce valuable tim- 

 ber. Only through such knowledge can he tell whether 

 it will be best to give his land up to slow-growing, high- 

 priced trees, or to quick-growing ones which will not sell 

 for quite so high a price but which will earlier be ripe 

 for cutting. 



WITH the iwssible exception of iron, there is 

 no manufactured material more useful to 

 man than wood is; it is easily worked and 

 enters into daily life in every conceivable form. We 

 walk on wooden floors and sit in wooden chairs at 

 wooden desks writing our thoughts with wood-encased 

 pencils on paper made of ground wood ; then there are 

 wooden window frames out of which we look upon the 

 growing trees that are cut for fuel to warm our houses 

 and cook our food. It is right and proper, therefore, 

 that trees should be cut down and made available for 

 man's use, just as any other crop should be harvested 

 when it is ripe. 



Besides growing wood, the forests, as a whole, serve 

 a number of other useful purposes, and have a special 

 influence on water and on soil. 

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WHEX rain falls on the bare surface it runs 

 off very rapidly. The result is a series of 

 floods and high waters, with corresponding 

 periods of drought and dried-up streams. This condi- 

 tion is not uncommon in many parts of China and in 

 certain areas of our own country where the forests have 

 been destroyed. Mr. Gifford Pinchot, the father of 

 Federal Forestry in the United States, at one time illus- 

 trated this point before some doubters by pouring water 

 from a tumbler on the slanting top of a polished table. 

 As might be expected, the water immediately ran off 

 onto the floor. Then, when the table was tilted at the 

 same angle, he poured an equal amount of water on 

 a large sheet of blotting paper placed on the table top. 

 In this case the water was held in the blotter. In e.xactly 

 the same way the spongy root masses under the trees, 

 combined with the woody soil which has been made up 

 by falling leaves and twigs, and decaying trunks and 

 stumps, holds the rain which comes from the sky. 



MOREO\'ER, even the most driving pelting 

 rains drop gently onto this forest floor because 

 they are caught first by the leaves and branches 

 and instead of falling with the force of a mile-high drop 

 they strike the ground from only a few feet up in the 

 air. Furthermore, a great deal of the rain slips down 

 the trunks of the trees and reaches the ground with 

 scarcely any force at all, to be taken into this blotter- 

 like mass and there held for a long time to be given out 

 through ever-flowing springs. 



When a heavy rain falls on a steep hillside and the 

 water gathers force as it goes down, it gullies and washes 

 out the soil, taking away the finer and more fertile 

 particles and carrying them down into the beds of the 

 streams. The finest particles are carried farthest, and in 

 many cases are borne away out to sea, where they form 

 shoals at the entrances of harbors. Thus, this best soil 

 is not only lost to the farmers, but is a serious bar to 

 the passage of vessels, and a source of great expense, 

 because it has to be dredged out of the channels in order 

 that commerce may be carried on. 



THIS soil-washing, or erosion, is particularly 

 harmful in the southeastern part of the United 

 States, where the fine soils melt away almost like 

 sugar. One writer on forestry has compared this action 



