CHAPTER XII 



Impending Catastrophe 



Our vanishing forest resources; Europe shows us 

 the remedy. 



Perchance if the reader has followed the story of 

 the forest thus far, he has learned something of the 

 debt he owes to its myriad products, its protective 

 influence, and its broadening effect upon the human 

 race. A mere encomium, however, is not enough. 

 We may praise to the skies the source of our bless- 

 ings, and still shut our eyes to an immediately Im- 

 pending catastrophe. When America was discov- 

 ered a vast forest covered almost the whole of the 

 eastern and southern sections of the country. It 

 gave way to the treeless prairies of the middle west 

 only to begin again at the Rocky Mountains and 

 extend with but few breaks for occasional deserts 

 and dry valleys to the Pacific, a total estimated at 

 850 million acres. 



Where is it today? Half of our original forest 

 has been cleared for farms, industries, and cities. 



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