90 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



coniferous forests, bounded by them on three sides 

 and on the west by the prairies, grew the most re- 

 markable of all, a hardwood forest of grandeur and 

 enormous size, which farms have long since largely 

 replaced. Most of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New 

 Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, together with 

 parts of New York, Pennsylvania, the Virginias, the 

 Carolinas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan 

 were included. It divided Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, 

 eastern Kansas, Oklahoma, and eastern Texas with 

 the prairie, and invaded the northern parts of what 

 now are Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Ar- 

 kansas. 



An extraordinary hardwood forest, this! It 

 shared large areas with the conifers, several species 

 of which were well scattered throughout it. There 

 were no less than a dozen species of oak, several elms 

 and maples, beech, poplar, locust, chestnut, cotton- 

 wood, tulip, sycamore, butternut, cherry, and dog- 

 wood in profusion, not to mention many less com- 

 mon and lesser species. And there were included 

 large quantities of black walnut which supplied the 

 nation's household furniture for a long period. 



As an entirety, our eastern forest probably 

 never had a peer for extent, variety, and beauty in 

 the world's history. More than a hundred and a 

 quarter species have been identified, which makes a 

 sharp contrast with the famous forest belt that is 

 the world's paradise of big trees, midway up the 

 Sierra of California, which has very few; wherein 



