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NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 



ceptional size, things of rarity ; but if we con- 

 sider the density of the ordinary woods, the 

 thickness of the undergrowth in every com- 

 monplace valley and on every hill and moun- 

 tain-side, the leafiness of the foliage in this 

 Western world becomes almost appalling. No 

 dweller in the Eastern United States, who is 

 content with a vacation in the Catskills, the 

 Adirondacks, or the White Mountains, can have 

 more than a faint idea of it. He is looking at 

 second-growth timber honeycombed by the axe, 

 at fields broken by the plough, at hill-side 

 thickets eaten by fire. The sparse remains of 

 the primeval forest in the Northwest, the tim- 

 bered valleys of California and Oregon, the vast 

 woods of Alaska, tell the tale of what America 

 once was, and would be yet, were nature al- 

 lowed to build undisturbed and as it pleased. 



All members of a series, yet how varied, 

 are the families of trees, and what a different 

 landscape effect they produce when massed in 

 groves or woods ! Almost every valley, hill, 

 and upland in America presents an appearance 

 peculiar to itself by virtue of its timber-growth. 

 The giant red-woods of California, the great 

 elms of the Mississippi, the cotton- woods of 

 the Missouri, the oak -openings of Minnesota 



