WHAT THE FORESTS DO FOR US 11 
or would make a double row of frame dwellings, which 
being placed ten feet apart would extend from New 
York to San Francisco. As stated in the first chapter, 
fully two-thirds of our population use wood as fuel, 
and the 90,000,000 cords of fuel wood annually con- 
sumed would make a stack of wood four feet high and 
four feet wide running five times around the globe. 
Americans are generally recognized as being the great- 
est newspaper and magazine readers in the world, and 
this statement can be well believed when we realize the 
amount of pulp wood which the voracious maw of our 
paper plants requires each year. The enormous total 
of 4,000,000 cords of wood is manufactured into paper 
pulp; which when turned into newspaper would cover 
a half a million acres with a single thickness. In fact, 
one daily paper in New York City consumes no less 
than twenty-five acres of spruce forest for every Sunday 
edition. 
Indirect Influences.—In the first chapter brief men- 
tion was made of the indirect influence exerted by the 
forests; how the climatic extremes are moderated; how 
the force of hot dry winds in the prairie country is 
checked and that the spongelike action of the forest 
cover is of great value in controlling run-off and dimin- 
ishing floods. In some parts of the country the influ- 
ences of a cover of woody growth on run-off may be 
more important than its value as a source of timber. 
For instance, in parts of California where a continuous 
flow of water is necessary for irrigation, the presence 
of chaparral thickets upon the steep mountain slopes is 
sufficient to prevent the rapid run-off of the winter 
rains and to hold the water in the soil that it may be 
gradually released when needed. As a consequence, 
this scrubby growth, though not producing timber, is 
