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. 



Pacific 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 im- 

 portance 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 1921 cut 46,000.000 feet of lum- 

 ber; the same vear New Mexico, with forests covering 5.250,000 

 acres, cut 94.000\000 feet. 



FOREST ODORS. 



Surely of all smells in the world the smell of 

 many trees is the sweetest and most fortifying. 

 The smell of a forest is infinitely changeful; it 

 varies with the hour of the day not in strength 

 merely, but in 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 timber lands 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 



