FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 



389 



admit that the American is practical and able to do things easily. He has skill and 

 ingenuity. Our sawmills work well; in fact, too well. They have divested our hill- 

 sides of their covering of green in short order and with disorder. In Europe the 

 forest is produced with great skill and foresight, but is utilized and converted with 

 clumsy implements. 



16. THE FORESTRY SCHOOL AT VALLAMBROSA, ITALY. 



The American in visiting a European forest naturally remarks that the utiliza- 

 tion of small sticks, etc., is all well enough when it is possible. In America, how- 

 ever, there is no use for such rubbish. YYe have no time to bother with it. We 

 grind fine lumber into paper pulp, split the big trees of California into grapevine 

 props, and throw away slabs which contain as much lumber as some saw logs. The 

 European in reply reminds you of the fact that corn was used for fuel in Kansas 

 when corn was cheap and fuel expensive. "With all your ingenuity you should 

 devise a use for this material. You utilize the pith of cornstalks, old iron, apple 

 cores and peelings, old rags, even old paper and junk, why not brushwood?" The 

 utilization of these materials is as important as any other branch of the subject. 



There are parts of Europe, however, in which there is plenty of wood, and where 

 the forests are protected and properly exploited, more for the good they do in hold- 

 ing in check the destructive forces of nature than for the wood they yield. 



