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. It is a 

 great entail. 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 Sta-tes 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 24.000.000 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 devastated 

 sad plains and swamps. 



Southern pin? forests. — The famous pineries of the South are 

 still a most important factor in the lumber production of the Na- 



