256 AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 



Suppose a man, a wise man, thinks of building a house — 

 does he go right to employing an architect and buying brick and 

 lumber, and hiring men, or does he go straight and hunt up a 

 reliable contractor? I think the wise man first says to himself: 

 "Can I afford to build this house? What can I spend on it? What 

 are our needs for rooms? When is the best time to begin?" And 

 then and only then he begins to think about how to build. 



Or think of the artist with his camp stool and his easel, who 

 faces some wide sweep of coast and sea, or mountains wreathed 

 in clouds, or a- similar and more intimate bit of Nature's handi- 

 work — a babbling mountain stream perhaps, or a patch of wild 

 flowers in the foreground and blue mountains in the distance. 

 Does the artist set right in to mixing his paints and sketching 

 in the picture? First he asks himself: "Is there a picture there? 

 Does it compose? Does it tell a faithful story as true pictures do?" 



I am not a professional forester in the technical sense, but a 

 business man who has dealt in private and some public afifairs, 

 an American citizen, and therefore deeply interested in the forest 

 and its welfare. I did not become enthusiastic over forest arboreta 

 in general and over one forest arboretum in particular until 

 came to realize that such object lessons were greatly needed to 

 help bring this whole great principle of practical forestry into 

 effect. 



First, however, I had to convince myself that practical 

 forestry was needed in America. I looked about me, and I travelled. 

 I travelled somewhat widely. And the more I looked, the more 

 I saw — apart from all matters of statistics — that wherever trees 

 are, men follow. And I saw that these men, this army of loggers, 

 which contains no fewer numbers than the army of the United 

 vStates, is busy everywhere. For the loggers are busy in the resinous 

 snow-laden north woods and in the forests of the Lake states. 

 They are busy in the Rocky Mountains from Montana to Arizona, 

 among the Lodgepole and the Western yellow pine. They are 

 busy among the great red fir and cedar and sugar pine of the 

 Pacific forests. And the size of this army of loggers grows steadily 

 with the years. 



So different are the conditions under which the loggers work, 

 that some of them have to wear the warmest clothes to be had 

 as a protection against the northern cold. Others work stripped 

 to the waist in the southern pine woods. Others again, are clad 



