RESEARCH—AN* AID TO FOREST PERPETUATION. 
187,000,000 acres of virgin forest. The total forest area, including 
culled, burned, and cut-over areas, still aggregates some 463,000,000 
acres. Of this, however, about $0,000,000 acres have been so severely 
cut and burned as to become an unproductive waste, and the remainder 
is in second growth, more than half of which is below saw timber size, 
and is of relatively inferior quality. “The remaining merchantable 
virgin forests are so distributed as to greatly reduce their national 
utility. While the bulk of the population and manufacturing industries 
of the United States are still east of the Great Plains, our remaining 
virgin forests are on the Pacific Coast. This involves long hauls, and 
consequently high prices to the industries depending upon wood. There 
is now consumed or destroyed annually in the United States 
56,000,000,000 board feet of material of saw timber size. Our depleted 
forests are growing less than one-fourth of this amount. The United 
States is not only cutting heavily into its remaining virgin forest every 
year, but is also using up the smaller material upon which the future 
supply of saw timber depends much more rapidly than it is being replaced. 
The scarcity of high-grade oak, poplar, ash, hickory, walnut, and other 
standard woods is now placing many American industries in a critical 
condition. The bulk of ‘the building lumber and structural timbers 
used in the eastern and central States during the last fifteen years was 
grown in the pine forests of the south. The virgin pine forests of the 
South Atlantic and Gulf States have now been reduced to nearly one- 
sixth of their original stand. The production of yellow pine lumber is 
now falling off, and within ten years will probably not exceed the 
requirements of the southern States themselves. Since 1919 the coun- 
try has ceased being self-supporting in news-print paper, and now 
imports two-thirds of the pulp, pulp wood, or news-print_ which we 
require. In 1919 the production of turpentine and resin had fallen off 
-50 per cent. Within ten years the United States will lose its command- 
ing position in the world’s market for these products, and may, in time, 
be unable to supply its domestic requirements. As the timber supply . 
has dwindled, the prices, due to the increasing scarcity and long- 
distance hauls, have steadily gone up. To meet the situation there is 
need for (1) a change in our present methods of handling the remain- 
ing Virgin timber lands, so as to prevent their devastation; (2) an 
increase in the forest productivity of the cut-over or idle land not 
suitable for agriculture; and (3) the elimination of waste in the 
handling of the raw material from the log to the finished product. 
The first two cannot be accomplished without some legislative measures 
by the Government and States, as it is doubtful if private initiative 
alone can overcome the economic difficulties in the way of better 
handling of timber lands. The latter is largely a better knowledge of 
the product, and can-be safely left to the self-interest of the industries. 
All three measures, however, if they are to be effective, must be based 
on accurate knowledge of the life of the forest, the best means of its 
perpetuation, and the properties of wood. The whole present agitation 
for a national forest programme in the last resort’ must rest on the 
work of the men of science, and the solution of such problems as the 
best méthod of converting idle land into productive timber land, 
methods of cutting which will secure either re-growth of the valuable 
species or the utilization of inferior species in place of the more valuable 
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