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AMERICAN MUSEUM GUIDE LEAFLETS 



Thus it is seen that a large |>art of the world is getting its wood from 

 Russia, Sweden, Austria-Hungan and Canada. The situation cannot 

 endure, however, for these countries arc destroying more forest than they 

 are reproducing. What is in view therefore, is a world-wide wood famine. 



Disastrous as a wood famine mighl prove to the industries of the co n- 

 try, it is not the only result attendant on the destruction of forests. The 

 country face- problems of flood, drought and drying winds, of soils washed 

 of their fertility, streams and harbors unnavigable because of irregular 

 water-How and because filled with ton- of -ilt from soil erosion (Fig 

 and all of these problems as well a- questions of irrigation depend largely 

 for their satisfactory solution on attention to the country's forests. 



That they do thus depend lies in the fact that forests convert the region 

 they occupy into a vast "sponge" for absorbing and holding water. It is 

 sa ; d thai the Croton Watershed con'.roMim; New York City's water supply 

 needs at least 1,000,000 trees planted to husband the rainfall. 1 The 



FIG. 21 THE ABSORBING POWER OF VARIOUS SOILS 



Diagram to illustrate the relative amounts of water held by various kinds of -oil 

 and to ahow thai leaf mould of the forest floor ha- greatest absorbing power 



•-«■ of the largest spring water companies in New York state lias been reforesting its 

 three hundred acres for several yean to protect its springs and maintain the purity «r the 

 war.r ami a regular supply. It reports planting 330,000 conifers consisting Ol larch, arbor 

 vitas, balsam, hemlock ami various pi 



