8 UTILITY OF FORESTS TO A NATION 



agricultural crop— the felling and conversion of the 

 crop, and the general administration of the area. 

 Secondly, the operations connected with the extrac- 

 tion and transport of the produce to the markets. 

 And, thirdly, the labour employed in the various 

 industries which depend upon forest produce for 

 their raw material, industries which always arise 

 in countries maintaining as part of their national 

 economy areas of properly managed commercial 

 forests. 



We will now glance at the indirect utility of the 

 forest. This may be briefly summarized as follows : 



Considerable areas of forest in a country exert 

 certain influences on the temperature and humidity 

 of the air and soil which in our moist and more or 

 less equable island climate are not of any great 

 outstanding importance, though the case is quite 

 otherwise in many parts of our great Empire. The 

 climate of the British Isles is second to none for the 

 growth of forests, but their maintenance is primarily 

 required for reasons other than climatic. Forests 

 also tend to regulate the flow and supply of water, 

 to maintain an even and permanent output from 

 springs, to maintain the level of rivers, so important 

 in cases where the latter are used for power works, 

 and to prevent or reduce violent floods in the latter. 

 Floods are usually the result of heavy rainstorms 

 falling on bare hill or mountain sides away up on 

 the catchment areas of the rivers. The rapid flow 

 of this water down the bare hill-sides, in addition to 

 causing flooding and silting up in the rivers, also 

 results in serious erosion taking place on the former. 



