4 Miscellaneous Circular 15, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture 
chapter. In the wake of this migration lie dreary cut-over wastes 
and fire-blackened hills, dismantled mills and deserted towns. On 
the western slope are the last big areas of virgin forest in the United 
States. 
NOT OURS FOR WASTING 
God has lent us the earth for our life. lt is a — 
great entai/. It belongs as much to those who are 
to come after us as to us, and we have no right, by 
anything we do or neglect, to involve them in any 
unnecessary penalties or to deprive them of the 
benefit which it was in our power to bequeath. 
—Ruskin. 
Destructive logging and fire make waste land 
STUDY NO. 2 
WHERE THE AMERICAN FORESTS ARE SITUATED 
Atlantic coast forests—New England has passed through every 
stage of forest exploitation, from the days when nothing but the best 
white pines and oaks were considered merchantable to the present 
dependence upon other sections for lumber and pulp wood. The ex- 
perience of New York and Pennsylvania has been similar to that of 
New England. From an original area of 110,000,000 acres, New 
England, New York, and Pennsylvania forests have shrunk to 
40,000,000 acres, and much of this is second growth. 
Lake States forests—Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, com- 
monly called the Lake States, once had one- -eighth of the entire for- 
ested area of the United States. It covered 112,000,000 acres and 
from 1870 to 1900 yielded an annual cut of 8,000 000 000 feet. The 
area has been reduced to 24,00,000 acres and the output to 1,000,- 
000,000 feet. Over 20,000 000 acres in the Lake States, suitable only 
for the growing of timber, are now fire-swept regions or devasted 
sad plains and swamps. 
Southern pine forests—The famous pineries of the South are 
still a most important factor in the “EEE production of the Na- 
