SURROUNDINGS OF THE HOME 255 



furnishing successive crops of wood and lumber for all time 

 to come they are left treeless, and their soil as the product 

 of ages of rock disintegration has been gullied and washed 

 away from their rugged slopes. The United States Govern- 

 ment through its Forest Service is doing something toward 

 reforesting certain areas, and more especially toward 

 conserving the timber supply still standing. The most 

 hopeful outlook is in those areas where new growths have 

 sprung up on lands less despoiled by the erosion that so 



FIG. 83. Ways of modern lumbering. 



often has followed wholesale timber butchery. But re- 

 forestation is expensive at the best, both in outlay for labor 

 and in the long period of years before the new growths are 

 large enough for market. So slow of growth are certain 

 trees that it is practically impossible to reforest with them. 

 Under wise management it is possible to get from forest 

 lands a large annual return in wood and lumber, and to 

 maintain at all times an undiminished vigorous growth of 

 timber. 



Forest fires cause serious annual losses in the timber supply 

 of the country yet remaining. It has been estimated that 

 they have destroyed fifty million dollars worth of timber 



