December 9, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



561 



wood at Land and thought little of the future. 

 To-day 110 million people in the United States 

 are using wood just as lavishly, just as waste- 

 fully as when our country was young. As a 

 nation we have been unable to think in terms 

 of possible timber exhaustion. Three or more 

 centuries of forest devastation, of forest de- 

 struction, have given us the habit of thinking 

 of the forest as inexhaustible. 



Let us go into the woods and see what we can 

 find. It must be clear to all of us that no mat- 

 ter how large an area of forest land this coun- 

 try holds within her borders, if there are no 

 trees growing thereon we can not look forward 

 to getting wood to build our homes and supply 

 our industries. We must have foresight to see 

 that regrowth or young stands of timber of 

 acceptable species must reclothe forest land 

 after the removal of old timber through lum- 

 bering, fire or other causes. Future timber 

 supply to meet the essential needs of this coun- 

 try depends upon one thing and one thing only, 

 namely, adequate regrowth. Somehow, or in 

 some way, this regrowth must be attained. 



Since settlement began we have been getting 

 our wood for the most part from virgin forests, 

 namely, from woods that were thousands of 

 years in developing and were never disturbed 

 by man. As a nation we have cut and other- 

 wise destroyed the virgin forests so rapidly, out 

 of our original 822 million acres we now have 

 left only 137 million acres and these for the 

 most part are in the more inaccessible parts of 

 the country, chiefly in the far West. For all 

 this the remnant of our virgin stands are now 

 yielding three fourths of all the saw timber 

 that we constime. At our present rate of cut- 

 ting and present rate of destruction by fire, it 

 is certain the remainder of our virgin timber 

 will be practically all gone within the life time 

 of people now living. At present we obtain but 

 one fourth of our timber needs from forest land 

 previously cut over or from stands that have 

 grown since the removal of the virgin crop. 

 It must be clear to all of us that with the 

 passage of time more and more of our timber 

 needs must be met from trees grown on forest 

 land that has been previously cut over. It 

 must also be appreciated that in the not distant 



future all our wood must come from such land 

 because there will be no virgin forest left. 



Prohibiting cutting in the remnant of our 

 virgin forests will not give us an adequate 

 future timber supply. We should not be crit- 

 ical of the cutting of virgin timber or for that 

 matter of the cutting of merchantable second 

 growth timber. The wood is needed and is a 

 basic resource in our national progress and in- 

 dustrial development. We should be critical 

 that regrowth, in the form of fully stocked 

 stands of desirable species, does not follow the 

 removal of the old stand by logging, by fire or 

 by any other cause whatsoever, when the re- 

 moval is from forest land, that is, land better 

 suited for the growth of timber than for other 

 economic uses. 



As a nation we have been so remiss in pro- 

 viding for regrowth, for new crops of timber of 

 acceptable species, to take the place of the old, 

 we are certain to suffer a severe timber short- 

 age as the remnant of our virgin timber dis- 

 appears and we are forced to turn to second 

 growth for a constantly and rapidly increasing 

 percentage of the wood supplies essential for 

 our prosperity and well being. 



About 463 million acres of the land area of 

 the United States is classed as forest at the 

 present time, but of this vast area 326 mil- 

 lion acres have been culled of their best 

 timber, cut over or burned. For the most 

 part these 326 million acres have been left 

 to chance restocking and only a comparatively 

 small percentage is fully stocked with desir- 

 able species. Nearly all of this vast area now 

 bears a more or less fragmentary growth, 

 often of inferior species. On a fourth of the 

 entire area there is no forest growth whatso- 

 ever and the land is idle. 



What can we expect in the way of future 

 timber supplies from our culled, cut-over and 

 burned forest areas? This is a very impor- 

 tant economic question at the present time. 

 Please remember 326 million acres of our pres- 

 ent area of forest land culled, cut over or 

 burned, and only 137 million acres of virgin 

 forest remaining, all of which will soon be 

 gone. 



Assuming that our area of forest land re- 



