CHAPTER X 
HARVESTING THE FOREST CROP 
TrInkK of a tree three hundred and fifty feet tall, 
thirty-five feet in diameter, containing 1,000,000 board 
feet of lumber, enough to make three hundred dwell- 
ing houses. Think of a tree that was a straight young 
sapling long before Athens was a power in the 
Aigean Sea, and was a strong giant in the prime of life 
wher Rome fell. In fact the oldest of these forest mon- 
archs have watched the seasons change during a lifetime 
of thirty-five centuries. The eucalyptus, a native of 
Australia, can exceed the giant sequoia in height, but 
there is no tree which can compare with it in bulk, age 
or grandeur. This is only one of many startling facts 
about the American forest. Regarding the extent and 
content of the original forest, mention has heen made 
previously, but of the richness, the complexity, the 
beauty of the virgin forest of America too much cannot 
be said. John Muir in one of his wonderful eulogies 
of the American wilderness describes how the soil was 
lately turned by the plows of God; how the vast glaciers 
that ground their way down from the North, leveling 
mountains and filling up valleys, mixed the soils in 
order that the tree, the most highly developed form of 
the vegetable kingdom, might have the proper seedbed 
upon which these splendid forests could be matured. 
In describing the original forests the superlative must 
be often used, for it is true that in the woods of North 
America we have the largest, oldest forest trees the 
world possesses. We have the greatest variety as well. 
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