FOREWORD 



By Charles Lathrop Pack, 



President of the American Tree Association 

 WASHINGTON, D. C. 



ALL GOOD THINGS must be known to be appreciated. 

 There are many things so common in our daily lives 

 that we accept them with little thought. So much a part 

 of our existence they are that they become, perhaps, little 

 known and often less appreciated. Trees run this risk. 



Shading us, protecting us, purifying our water supply, 

 furnishing the homes that are built from them, providing the 

 paper we use and serving us in thousands of ways, trees 

 deserve to be known and to be appreciated. Without them 

 existence would be worth little. 



Our country is the greatest in the world. In wealth, in 

 standards of living and in comforts it stands alone. Nature 

 endowed it with boundless resources. We have taken this 

 wealth and built a great nation. The trees in our forests have 

 been our greatest resources; they have made possible what has 

 been accomplished. 



When our forefathers came to this vast land it was cov- 

 ered with nearly nine hundred million acres of forest. To- 

 day only one-fifth of this immense resource remains. A 

 quarter of a billion acres of this original forest are growing 

 young trees, many of little value. More than eighty million 

 other acres whose destiny is to produce forests alone, are pro- 

 ducing nothing. Of what remains to us of our forests, we 

 are using four times as fast as we are allowing or helping 

 Nature to replace. 



That is the situation with our forest. One tree or one 

 hundred trees do not make a forest. But one tree stands for 

 the forest. We send one man to our Congress to speak for 

 thousands. We can plant a tree in our dooryard and let it 

 speak for millions. 



This is the problem of today. It is a problem that the 

 citizens of tomorrow will have brought home to them. They 

 will need to know the trees to meet it. 



This little book is the personal story of the trees that 

 grow commonly in the soil of our State. It is the story of 

 the trees whose forefathers peopled the great majority of the 

 acres of our State. They are your trees; citizens of your 

 State; companions of your life; servants of your comfort. 



Knowledge of trees is more than a duty of good citizens. 

 It is a joy to the one who has this knowledge. The tree is a 



