APPALACHIAN NATIONAL PARK 27 
manufacturer. Man has menaced the existence of 
the forests without stopping to consider the conse- 
quences. 
The debt that we of the New World owe to our 
forests is apparent when we remember that the 
products of the tree alone occupy the fourth place as a 
source of wealth to the nation, to say nothing of the 
many and invaluable uses of forested land. As civil- 
ization advances and all the secrets of the earth are 
opened up, as new discoveries are made and new forces 
harnessed and put to work, the tree becomes more 
necessary instead of less. Its wood enters into every- 
thing, or if it is displaced in one industry it becomes 
more necessary in another, one of the latest discov- 
eries causing the destruction of such enormous quan- 
tities of wood that one stands aghast before the facts : 
for the worst menace to our forests to-day is the all 
consuming paper-pulp mill, the most reckless tim 
ber-cutting known to history being done in its serv- 
ice. This danger, which threatened the extinction 
of our forests with frightful rapidity, is now to an 
extent being met by the manufacturers themselves, 
some of whom, realizing the extremity to which they 
will soon be brought under existing conditions, are 
beginning to provide for their own future by reforest- 
ing the cut-over lands. But even at the best the 
tremendous demands of the pulp-mills are believed 
to be a menace to the forests of the nation, and 
we should be made more unhappy at the prospect 
ahead if it were not for our experience with other 
threatened dangers, bogies like the diminishing sup- 
fm- ^^ 
