UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



MISCELLANEOUS PUBLICATION No. 162 



WASHINGTON, D.C 



JULY, 1933 



OUR FORESTS 



What They Are and What They Mean to Us 



By Marie Foote Heisley, assistant in information, Branch of Public Relations, 



Forest Service 



CONTENTS 



Page 



Introduction 1 



What the forest is. 



The forest community 2 



How a tree lives 2 



How a tree grows 3 



Relationships of trees 7 



Forest soil 8 



Animals of the forest community 8 



Forest regions of the United States. 



Northern forest region 10 



Central hardwood forest region 11 



Southern forest region 12 



Rocky Mountain forest region 14 



Pacific coast forest region . 14 



How our forests serve us. 



Forest products 15 



Page 



How our forests serve us— Continued 



Forests and water supply 19 



Other uses of the forest 19 



Enemies of the forest. 



Fire— the arch destroyer 20 



Insects 22 



Fungous diseases 23 



Other enemies : 24 



Forestry in the United States. 



What forestry is 24 



Federal forestry 24 



State forestry 29 



Farm forestry 30 



Commercial forestry 32 



Timber — a vital national resource 33 



INTRODUCTION 



The history of the United States is staged against a forest back- 

 ground. From earliest colonial times the forest has played a most 

 important part in the life of the country. Although the early set- 

 tlers had to wrest from it the land upon which to grow their crops, 

 it furnished the timber vitally needed in building their homes and 

 industries. Some of the first colonial exports were forest products, 

 such as planks and staves, pitch and tar. The tall pines of New 

 England furnished masts and spars for many a ship, and by the time 

 of the Revolution were carrying canvas on all the Seven Seas. 



As the country expanded the forest provided most of the sinews 

 of development and trade. The prairie schooners and canal boats of 

 the pioneers were made of wood, and the early railroads which fol- 

 lowed them, like those of today, were laid on wooden ties. Number- 

 less communities sprang up, subsisting mainly upon the bounty of 

 the forest. Each decade saw more and more forests cut away with 

 the extravagance born of the idea that America's forests were inex- 

 haustible. More and more forest land was laid bare, to be developed 

 into towns and farms or to be left lying idle and unproductive. The 

 exploitation of our forests, however, probably reached its peak dur- 

 ing the last 30 years of the nineteenth century, when the country's 



