THE EARTH'S BOUNTY 



be understood, or it will be impossible to avoid 

 violating some of the laws of reciprocity which 

 nature has united with such wonderful accu- 

 racy that no one can be impaired without 

 injury to the system of co-operation which 

 governs the entire community. Perhaps the 

 most important, and certainly the most dis- 

 tinctively silvicultural characteristic, is the soil; 

 or, to be more correct, the ground cover. 

 There is no condition quite like it to be found 

 outside of woodland boundaries. To a casual 

 observer it is only a deep carpet of dead leaves 

 and waste material. But to the forester it is a 

 great power, to which deferential considera- 

 tion must always be shown, for on its condi- 

 tion depends germination of seeds and the 

 principal food supply of trees throughout 

 their lives. 



Each autumn, when trees shed their leaves, 

 a fresh mulch is spread over the surface of the 

 ground, and the lower layers of preceding 

 years progressively succumb to age, the fleshy 

 parts melting into a solutive fertilizer which 



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