PRACTICAL rOEESTRY. 45 



evergreen Rocky Mountain forest, wliich clothes the slopes of this 

 great range from the Canadian line to Mexico. Separated from the 

 Rocky Mountain forest by the interior deserts, the Pacific coast forest 

 covers the flanks of the Sierras, the Cascades, and the Coast ranges. 

 Its largest trees are the giant sequoia and the great coast redwood, 

 and its most important timber is the fir. 



The forests of the Philippine Islands cover an area of more than 

 40,000,000 acres. Their timbers, almost wholly different from those 

 of the United States, are exceedingly valuable, both as cabinet 

 woods and as construction timber. An efficient forest service was 

 organized in 1898, and following its reorganization in 1902 a new 

 and excellent forest law was passed in 1904. The Philippine forest 

 service costs but half as much as the revenue received from the 

 forests of the islands. 



The island of Porto Rico contains a national forest reserve, the 

 site of which was once covered with valuable hardwoods ; but this 

 forest has been much abused. Porto Rico, like the Philippines, has 

 many kinds of wood valuable for cabinetmaking. 



The settler and the forest. — When the early settlers from the Old 

 World landed on the Atlantic coast of North America they brought 

 with them traditions of respect for the forest created by generations 

 of forest protection at home. The country to which they came was 

 covered, for the most part, with dense forests. There was so little 

 open land that ground had to be cleared for the plow. It is true 

 that the forest gave the pioneers shelter and fuel, and game for food, 

 but it was often filled with hostile Indians, it hemmed them in on 

 every side, and immense labor was required to win from it the soil 

 in which tO' raise their necessary crops. Naturally, it seemed to 

 them an enemy rather than a friend. Their respect for it dwindled 

 and disappeared, and its place was taken by hate- and fear. 



The feeling of hostility to the forest which grew up among the 

 early settlers continued and increased among their descendants 

 long after all reason for it had disappeared. But even in the early 

 days far-sighted men began to consider the safety of the forest. In 

 1653 the authorities of Charlestown, in Massachusetts, forbade the 

 cutting of timber on the town lands without permission from the 

 selectmen, and in 1689 the neighboring town of Maiden fixed a 

 penalty of 5 shillings for cutting trees less than 1 foot in diameter 

 for fuel. An ordinance of William Penn, made in 1681, required 

 that 1 acre of land be left covered with trees for every 5 acres cleared. 

 But these measures were not well followed up, and the needless 

 destruction of the forest went steadily on. 



First steps in forestry. — More than a hundred years later, in 1795, 

 a committee of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, 



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