4 IMPORTANT TIMBER TREES 



ment, be maintained in useful perpetuity, and in many 

 cases their productive capacity be increased, and that while 

 we are consuming their annual accretion we need not 

 necessarily exhaust them ; and, what is equally important, 

 it is likewise realized that forests can be grown in practi- 

 cally all sections of our country where, in our early history, 

 they once grew but have since been destroyed, and also 

 even where there is no proof that any have ever existed. 

 These facts give vital and commanding importance to that 

 heretofore neglected feature of our national welfare known 

 as "Practical Forestry," a feature which is second only 

 to agriculture and one which hereafter must go hand in 

 hand with that industry. 



It is gratifying to know that there is a growing concep- 

 tion of the actual facts relating to our forest conditions, 

 notwithstanding that they reveal a most deplorable state. 

 We have come to understand that our present forests will 

 no longer be capable of producing the vast amount of use- 

 ful products which will be demanded of them. We have 

 learned from statistics obtained by governmental effort that 

 we are consuming our forests more than three times as fast 

 as they grow, 1 and we well know what, if not arrested, that 

 will lead to. It is largely realized, too, that many new uses 

 for forest products have recently sprung up, and that, through 

 these new uses and the rapid increase of population in our 

 countiy, the future demands for forest products will inev- 

 itably be greatly increased ; and all must see that if such 

 demand cannot be promptly and fully met the index hand 

 on the dial of progress of this nation will advance no 

 further, but, instead, go backward. 



1 " It has been shown that the present annual cut of forest products requires 

 at least twenty billion cubic feet of wood. To produce this quantity of wood 

 without impairing the capital stock, over seven hundred million acres of 

 forest must make an annual increase of thirty cubic feet per acre. Under 

 present conditions of mismanagement and neglect it is safe to say that the 

 average annnal increment is less than ten cubic feet per acre for the en- 

 tire area. This means that each year's cnt, at the present rate, takes the 

 growth of more than three years." United States Forest Service Circular, 

 No. 97, page 14. 



