wo 
Gr 
He 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
The foliage. 
Timber- 
growths. 
ceptional size, things of rarity ; but if we con- 
sider the density of the ordinary woods, the 
thickness of the undergrowth in every com- 
monplace valley and on every hill and moun- 
tain-side, the leafiness of the foliage in this 
Western world becomes almost appalling. Ne 
dweller in the Eastern United States, who is 
content with a vacation in the Catskills, the 
Adirondacks, or the White Mountains, can have 
more than a faint idea of it. He is looking at 
second-growth timber honeycombed by the axe, 
at fields broken by the plough, at hill-side 
thickets eaten by fire. The sparse remains of 
the primeval forest in the Northwest, the tim- 
bered valleys of California and Oregon, the vast 
woods of Alaska, tell the tale of what America 
once was, and would be yet, were nature al- 
lowed to build undisturbed and as it pleased. 
All members of a series, yet how varied, 
are the families of trees, and what a different 
landscape effect they produce when massed in 
groves or woods! Almost every valley, hill, 
and upland in America presents an appearance 
peculiar to itself by virtue of its timber-growth. 
The giant red-woods of California, the great 
elms of the Mississippi, the cotton-woods of 
the Missouri, the oak-openings of Minnesota, 
