396 



PRACTICAL BOTANY 



wooded areas and the creation of tracts of woodland in por- 

 tions of the naturally treeless regions have become matters of 

 national importance. 



367. Our timber supply in early times. At the time of the 

 discovery of America, and until long after the Revolution, 

 much of the territory now included in the United States 

 was among the most densely wooded portions of the north 



temperate zone. No other 

 temperate region of equal 

 extent possesses so great a 

 diversity of dicotyledonous 

 trees, and gymnospermous 

 trees are also very abundant. 

 Along almost the entire At- 

 lantic coast, and inland to 

 what are now the states of 

 Illinois and Minnesota, tim- 

 ber for every kind of con- 

 struction was once to be had 

 at an extremely low price. 

 The prevalence in early times 

 of log houses, the enormous 

 beams of which old houses in 

 the northeastern states are 

 framed, the panels of white 

 pine, often of single boards 

 three or more feet wide, without a knot, and occasionally in 

 the Middle West the fence made of split rails of black walnut, 

 all testify to the superabundance of timber in early days. 



368. Decrease in the supply. In the days of the pioneers 

 the extensive forests were serious hindrances to the settlement 

 of the country. They harbored wild beasts and Indians, they 

 made road-building difficult and farming at first almost im- 

 possible, and they sheltered great malaria-breeding swamps. 

 Naturally the first step in rendering the new country habit- 

 able was to make clearings. Trees were girdled by thousands, 



FIG. 319. Primeval deciduous mixed 

 forest, maple and beech 



