Forestry and the National Forests 5 
tion. They furnish a third of the cut of the entire country and will 
remain important for at least another 10 or 15 years. Very little 
was done with the wonderful southern forests until after the Civil 
War, but depletion has been so rapid since that the end is already 
plainly in view. ie 
Pacifie coast forests—Practically half of the remaining virgin 
timber in the United States is in the Pacific coast forests. Wash- 
ington leads all States in the production of lumber, having recently 
wrested this honor from Louisiana. The trees of commercial impor- 
tance on the Pacific coast are Douglas fir, western yellow pine, 
western hemlock, redwood, sugar pine, true fir, western red cedar, 
and lodgepole pine. Very little lumber was cut in California or 
the Northwest before the gold rush in 1849, but the inroad upon the 
last great reserve of coniferous timber has progressed far. 
Rocky Mountain forests—The Rocky Mountain forests are those 
in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, western South Da- 
kota, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. Sixty-four million acres 
were embraced in the original forested areas of these States, and 
there are still about 61,000,000 acres. The timber grows very slowly, 
however, and from 150 to 200 years are required for the principal 
lumber trees to mature. Montana and Idaho are the only States in 
this group producing lumber above their actual needs. Arizona has 
5,000,000 acres in forest, and in 1923 cut 130,000,000 feet of lumber; 
the same year New Mexico, with forests covering 5,250,000 acres, cut 
136,000,000 feet. 
FOREST ODORS 
Surely of all smel/s in the world the smel/ of 
many trees is the sweetest and most fortifying. 
The smell of a forest is infinitely changetul; it 
varies with the hour of the day not in strength 
merely, but tn character; and the different sorts 
of trees as you go from one zone of the wood to 
another seem to live among different kinds of 
atmosphere. 
—Robert Louis Stevenson. 
STUDY NO. 3 
FORESTRY AND WHAT IT IS 
It has been demonstrated throughout the world that it is possible 
to harvest the mature or ripe timber from land and to grow another 
forest on the same area. Timber growing is an agricultural pursuit. 
It is very like the production of crops of alfalfa, corn, and wheat 
from farm land. ‘Timber crop succession on the timberlands of 
the Southwest depends essentially upon the ability to secure the 
setting of the second crop by natural revegetation. The costs of 
reforestation by artificial means—that is, by planting—make that 
method impracticable for this region. Natural reproduction can 
be accomplished, however, through proper planning and handling 
of the forest before and during the harvest of the ripe timber. Mak- 
ing land that is best suited to tree growing yield successive crops 
of timber, including all the steps necessary to the process, is forestry. 
Forest benefits—Wood and its products enter in some form or 
other into practically every activity of life. They are absolutely 
. 
; 
; 
! 
