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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGR 



Agriculture Information Bulletin No 



Formerly Miscellaneous Publication No 

 Revised October 1950 



OUR FORESTS: WHAT THEY 

 AND WHAT THEY MEAN TO US 



By Charles E. Randall and Marie Foote Heisley, Division of Information and 

 Education, Forest Service 



CONTENTS 



Page 



Introduction 1 



What the forest is: 



The forest community 2 



How a tree lives 2 



How a tree grows 3 



Kelationships of trees ^___ 7 



Forest soil 8 



Animals of the forest community 9 



Forest regions of the United States: 



Northern forest region 10 



Hardwood forest region 11 



Southern forest region 12 



Tropical forest region 14 



Rocky Mountain forest region. 14 



Pacific coast forest region 1C 



How our forests serve us: 



Forest products-..,., 18 



Page 



How our forests serve us— Continued 



Forests and our water supply 21 



Other uses of the forest 21 



Enemies of the forest: 



Fire— the arch destroyer 23 



Insects 25 



Fungus diseases 26 



Other enemies 26 



Forestry in the United States: 



What forestry is 27 



Federal forestry 28 



National-forest administration 29 



State forestry 33 



Farm forestry 34 



Commercial forestry 36 



Timber, a vital national resource ... 37 



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 settlers 

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

 nished the timber vitally needed in building their homes and in- 

 dustries. 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, which 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 

 commerce and trade. The prairie schooners and canal boats of the 

 pioneers were made of wood, and the early railroads which followed 

 them, like those of today, were laid on wooden ties. Numberless com- 

 munities sprang up, subsisting mainly upon the bounty of the forest. 

 Each decade saw more and more forests cut away with the extrava- 

 gance born of the idea that America's forests were inexhaustible. 

 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 during the last 30 



913707°— 50 



(Issued January 1952) 



