4 THE BOOK OF FORESTRY 
prevailing winds. In some parts of the United States 
the indirect influences may be more important to the 
community than the supply of timber which the forest 
provides. 
Original Forests.—When the first settlers landed upon 
the Atlantic Coast there stretched before them from the 
ocean to the treeless prairie, over twelve hundred miles, 
a vast forest, unbroken, except for occasional Indian 
clearings, the like of which the world has never seen. 
Beyond the prairies the Rocky Mountains and Pacific 
Coast forests were to be found in all their magnificence, 
favored by a temperate climate and sufficient rainfall. 
For density and quantity no region on the globe could 
exceed this store of timber. 
The original forest area covered about 850,000,000 
aeres and contained 5,200,000,000,000 board feet of tim- 
ber. As a result of clearing land for agriculture, lum- 
bering and forest fires this forest has been reduced to 
545,000,000 acres which contain about 2,500,000,00¢ 
board feet. In other words since the settlement of our 
country over half the original timber supply has been cut 
and burned, and today our nation is using twice as much 
timber per capita as it did fifty years ago. 
Early Need of Forestry.—lIn spite of the vast storehouse 
of timber lying close to the colonial settlements, lack of 
roads often made fuel and construction timber rather 
difficult to procure and the pinch of timber poverty was 
often felt. 
William Penn in 1682 stipulated that one acre should 
be kept in the forest for every five acres cleared by those 
who purchased lands from him. In 1795 the Society of 
Agriculture of New York published a report on the best 
mode of preserving and increasing the growth of timber 
and a few years later the Federal Government appro- 
