WITH SAirS !TATUILVLI5T3 » KSirSASE Friday. August 15, 1930 



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ANyOU!TCS?gl!T ; Oar Wilds Man is with us. Ke has ii*et-4«reii Ofl one 61 

 those visits with Uncle Sam's Naturalists. This tine, it was to the 

 United States Forest Service. Wnat the foresters told him about the 



Wilds, he will now tell us As you know, this feature is presented 



hy Station in cooperation with the United States Department 



of Agriculture, once every two weeks Well, Mr. Wilds Man? — 



We all reco^ize the old saying that "great oaks from little 

 acorns grow." 



We realize that little trees are the stuff that big trees are 

 made of. yet, I ventiirre to say. most of us think of the forest as 

 being pretty much the sane, not only year in and year out, but for 

 ages upon ages. Of course, young trees grow old, and old trees die. 

 Bat new trees take their places, ^e usuallj"" think of the woods as 

 something perjTianent. 



However, Mr. G. A. Dathie reminds us that forests are in a con- 

 stant process of change. The very character of the trees changes at 

 times, nature herself has a v/a^/' of rotating the tree crops in the woods. 

 Mr. Duthie has jj.st joined the Public Relations Branch of the Forest 

 Ser^rtoe at its headquarters in Washington. For some years, he has 

 lived among the trees of our National Forests in the West. Maybe that 

 is why he sees these changes so clearly. His work has taken him anong 

 our fossil forests. He has been able to compare the trees w'lich grew 

 millions of years ago with those growing today. But all those changes 

 haven't taken place in the prehistoric past. Natural tree crop rota- 

 tion can be seen in many parts of our woods even now. 



As Mr. Dathie was telling me all this, the thought of thaoe giant 

 redwoods of California towered up in my mind. Those trees certainly 

 have been there for some time. They don't sugf-est anj' change in tree 

 crops. Some of those now standing have been there hundreds, and even 

 thousands of years. 



To Mr. Duthie, however, those redwood forests suggest that 

 conditions on the Pacific Coast have been pretty much the same for a 

 long time. Where the big trees grow, the rainfall is heavy. The 

 •heavy rains, and ocean fogs in which these forests are often bathed have 

 helped keep down the danger of fire. 



