FORESTS AND MANKIND CHARLES LATHROP PACK AND TOM GILL FORESTS AND MANKIND By CHARLES LATHROP PACK President of the American Tree Association and TOM GILL Forester, Charles Lathrop Pack Forestry Trust "An excellent book — clear, inform- ing, convincing, adequate. The authors reveal not only a comprehensive grasp of their great subject in its historical, technical, economic, and social relation- ships, but ability to state the case in a way at once appealing to the student, the forester, and the general reader. For one who is seeking information and guidance on a national question of con- spicuous importance, it is a book to own and to read time and again."— A. R. Munn, Dean of Cornell University. "The book fills a much needed place in American forest literature. It pre- sents in a very readable form the story of the life of trees and forests, their service to human welfare and progress, the problems of practical forestry, and the advance of the forestry movement in this country. It is a book which everyone interested in forestry should read and have on his shelf." — Henry S. Graves, Dean of Yale School of Forestry. Mr. Pack is undoubtedly the best known exponent of popular education in forestry in the United States. He is past president of the American Forestry Association, honorary member of the Society of American Foresters, and the author of numerous books and articles on forestry subjects. Mr. Gill is a graduate of Yale School of Forestry and was formerly in charge of the educational activities of the United States Forest Service. He is a senior member of the Society of Amer- ican Foresters and forestry contributor to Nature Magazine. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK FORESTS AND MANKIND THE MACMILLAN COMPANY CW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OP CANADA, LIMITED TORONTO infill * app^ _^, IH FOREST STREAM FORESTS AND MANKIND By CHARLES LATHROP PACK and TOM GILL NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1929 COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1929. All rights reserved, including the right of re- production in whole or in part in any form. Printed in the United States of America by J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK DEDICATED TO FORESTRY ACKNOWLEDGMENT In preparing this book the authors have made frequent reference to the publications of the U. S. Forest Service, the Society of American Foresters and many State forestry publi- cations. They acknowledge especial indebtedness to the writings of William B. Greeley, Raphael Zon, Earle Clapp, William Sparhawk, E. A. Smith, Gilford Pinchot, Wilbur R. Mattoon, E. W. Berry and Charles Boyce. Additional thanks for review of manuscript are due to Raphael Zon and William Sparhawk. Line drawings are by Garnet Jex, staff artist of Nature Magazine. Illustrations not otherwise credited are by courtesy of the United States Forest Service. A FOREWORD To tell the story of our forests is to tell the story of man's loyal ally in his long and perilous pilgrimage from cave- dweller to master of the civilized world. Trees from the first have been our staunch and constant friends. Here in America our forests present a unique background to man's conquest of the new world. Without abundant wood, without the far-reaching effects of widespread forests, the his- tory of this country would certainly have been tremendously modified. The American pioneer could never have made this continent his own so quickly, or so easily, without the ex- istence of those forest allies of his. And the story of these forests, the intimate tale of what trees are, what they have done and how they have influenced human development is all part of the epic of man. It is a story that has to do with the forests of yesterday, today, and tomor- row, with the ever changing aspects of the earth, the ceaseless, but varying relationships between men and trees, and with that very mysterious thing we call life. It is a story that began as far back as the beginning of humanity and that will not end until the end of time itself. In one sense the story of our forests is a reaffirming of old Biblical wisdom, that tells us, "As ye sow, so shall ye also reap." Not even from the great bountiful mother nature can we al- ways take away and never replace. Some day comes a reckon- ing. In America we have reaped, but we have not planted. We IX x A FOREWORD have cut lavishly the timber heritage we found here, but we have given little thought to a new crop. Yet, just as man has emerged from an era when wild game and wild fruit were sufficient sources of his daily food, so is he emerging from an era when he can depend on the wild forests for his lumber, his paper, his turpentine, and his fuel. Tomorrow he enters an age of man-made forests and the tale of how this came to be and how he is responding to these new conditions is one of the most colorful pages of man's de- velopment. All this, together with a glimpse of what the future holds in our eternal partnership of man and trees, go to make up this story of the forests. CHARLES LATHROP PACK TOM GILL CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENT vii FOREWORD ix CHAPTER I. THE TREE — MASTERPIECE OF THE PLANT WORLD ... 3 II. How TREES GROW n III. THE FOREST 25 IV. THE FORESTS OF LONG AGO 37 V. FORESTS OF THE WORLD . , « 49 VI. FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES ........ 61 VII. WHAT FORESTRY Is 73 VIII. How THE FORESTER WORKS . , 85 IX. FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES 97 X. OUR NATIONAL FORESTS • • • • m XI. How THE FORESTS HELP MANKIND ....... 123 XII. WOOD — GREATEST GIFT OF THE FOREST 133 XIII. WHERE OUR PAPER COMES FROM 147 XIV. OTHER GIFTS OF THE FOREST 157 XV. FORESTS AND WILD LIFE 167 XVI. FOREST ENEMIES 177 XVII. FIRE — THE GREAT DESTROYER 191 XVIII. THE WAR AGAINST WOOD WASTE 205 XIX. FORESTRY AND THE FARMER 217 XX. INDUSTRIAL FORESTRY 227 XXI. THE TASK AHEAD 239 BIBLIOGRAPHY 249 ILLUSTRATIONS FOREST STREAM Frontispiece FACING PAGE FOREST DEPTHS 4 AMONG THE REDWOODS 14 FORESTED MOUNTAINSIDE 32 YOUNG PINE PLANTATION 42 SKIDWAYS OF LOGS IN THE FOREST 52 A FORESTER'S CABIN 66 FOREST FIRE LOOKOUT 76 A FOREST RANGER -. «... . . . . 92 A MODERN SAWMILL . . 100 THE FALLEN MONARCH . . . . .... . . . . . 116 A LOG CHUTE . . . . . . . . „ . , . . 124 HAULING LOGS TO THE MILL , . * . .... . . . 136 STACKING LOGS FOR PAPER PULP . * . . . » . . . . 150 UNLOADING LOGS AT THE LUMBERMILL 152 IN THE TURPENTINE WOODS 162 AIRPLANE VIEW OF FOREST FIRE 170 FIGHTING FIRE . . . . . . . 178 AFTER FIRE . 196 PLANTING IN THE NATIONAL FORESTS 208 FORESTS AND FARM LANDS 220 HARVEST TIME IN THE FOREST 230 FORESTERS IN WINTER CAMP 242 A FOREST TREE NURSERY 246 CHAPTER 1 THE TREE— MASTERPIECE OF THE PLANT WORLD CHAPTER 1 THE TREE— MASTERPIECE OF THE PLANT WORLD Trees and rocks will teach what thou canst not hear from a master. — ST. BERNARD. EVERYTHING in this world — every material thing — has been placed by science into one of two great classes or kingdoms. These are the kingdoms of the living and of the lifeless — the animate and the inanimate. Into the first class science system- atically gathers together all the earth's dwellers that contain the mysterious spark called life. All plants, insects, birds, the smallest germ, the tiniest seed — man himself. These, we say, belong to the kingdom of the living. In the other class falls everything that is without life, the rocks, the waters of the earth, the metals in the earth, the atmosphere that surrounds it. The kingdom of living things has been still further divided into animal life and plant life. It is a convenient division and apparently definite and clear cut, but as a matter of fact, no one has yet been able to say just where one division ends and the others begins. The boundaries shift back and forth and grow indistinct. For, so far as science has been able to learn all living substance is basically the same and among the exceed- ingly minute forms of life it is not always possible to tell animal from plant. The microscope has revealed living things so perplexing in form and structure that no one can say whether 3 4 FORESTS AND MANKIND they are plants or animals. Scientists call them plant-animals and animal-plants, for they resemble both and they exist along that shadowy borderline between the two — a borderline that some day as we penetrate deeper into this baffling question of life forms may disappear. And after all, these divisions of plant life and animal life are relatively unimportant. It is much more important to real- ize that both plants and animals are living, growing things and often dependent for their welfare and existence one on the other. Without plants animal life would disappear from the earth and without animal life our plants would be different in many ways. Some plants would even cease to exist. For many of our flowers depend on bees and nectar-seeking insects to spread their pollen to other flowers and form fertile life-bear- ing seeds. Without bees such plants would soon become extinct and without their nectar, life for the bees would become im- possible. So in a sense all nature is a vast partnership to preserve eternally both in animal and plant that vital force called life. The secret of this life force — its origin, its nature, its ultimate manifestations, still lies in the dark realm of the unknown. We only know that it is handed down from generation to genera- tion of plants and animals throughout all the changing world. And even when nature seems cruel, even when a thousand seed- lings die that one may live^ or when the weaker animal must serve as food for the stronger, even then one may see beyond all this a plan that seeks even at the expense of the individual to preserve the thing that is infinitely more precious and im- portant than the individual— life itself. Constantly both animals and plants are seeking out and creating surroundings that will make it possible for them to f holographed by A. Gas fall FOREST DEPTHS THE TREE— MASTERPIECE OF PLANT WORLD 5 fulfill the highest life of which they are capable. Each can be helped in this search of theirs and each can be injured and killed. The farmer with his ploughing, fertilizing, and irri- gating makes conditions most favorable for the growth of food plants. The forester helps nature develop the most use- ful trees. Man has entered very fundamentally, both for good and bad into this partnership of nature. The manifestations of life are wonderfully varied. Certain species in both plant and animal kingdoms seem to possess this spark of life more abundantly. They are more alive, more complex in their nature, better able to adapt themselves to the changes that take place in the world about them, and better able to perpetuate their kind. These we have come to think of as the higher animals and the higher plants. And just as among animals, man is the highest manifestation of nature's power, so in the world of plants the tree is the most majestic creation that the long centuries have produced. We have come to think of trees as plants that surpass all other vegetative growth in height and that usually have a single wooden stem or trunk branching at the top. This may serve as a practical definition, although it is well to remember that in different regions trees vary and the tall spruce of our eastern seacoast may be only a struggling shrub a few inches high in the bleak, cold uplands of the north. It is exactly the same kind of tree botanically but so bitter is the struggle to live, battling the cold and storms, starving in sterile soil, that it has just barely been able to exist. It has not been able to reach the size of its more fortunate brothers farther south. So our definition of a tree must be broad enough to include the lowly dogwood that raises its flowering crown hardly twenty feet 6 FORESTS AND MANKIND from the earth, no less than the sequoia that looks down over all the forest from more than ten times that height. Trees differ very widely in both size and appearance — in bark, leaves, wood structure and habit of growth. Some trees have fragrant flowers like the magnolia, cherry or bass wood. Others, such as the elm and the pines, have flowers that are quite odorless and so small they are rarely noticed. The leaves of some turn red in autumn like the maples and sumachs, others yellow like the ash and tulip tree. Some have leaves so gigantic they could be wrapped about one like a robe and others leaves that are hardly bigger than your fingernail. Some trees have wood so soft you can tear it apart in your hands and others wood so hard no nail can pierce it and so heavy it sinks in water like a stone. In age, too, trees differ tremen- dously. The aspens are old trees when they have reached forty or fifty years while others at that age are youngsters just get- ting a start. Two hundred years is perhaps an average age for trees, although the sequoia lives to see two and three thousand, and the Dragon Tree of India is said to be about five thousand years old. Even in the same lo- cality trees vary enor- THE TREE— MASTERPIECE OF PLANT WORLD 7 mously in structure and habit of growth and it is by these characteristics that botanists divide them into different species, genera, and families. The very fact that trees do possess such widely-differing character- istics of growth, fruit, bark, and wood has always enabled them to serve widely and well the various and numerous needs of man. Yet all trees, different as they seem to be in structure and habit are governed by the same laws of life and growth, and in spite of their outward differences are closely akin in their need for food, in their manner of growth and living. Nor are these needs so greatly different from man's needs. Both men and trees come into being with the power of growth and of creat- ing their own kind. Both require food, air, and moisture. Both struggle to conquer all obstacles that come between them and their destinies— and both at the end must die. Yet with the trees old age seems more a question of size than of years. For some, like the spruces, may live under dense shade cut off from the sunlight and hardly able to grow at all. A century may go by and the tree will be barely thicker than a man's wrist. Then, if the larger trees are cut from about it, this same spruce will put on rapid growth and become as large as its unshaded fel- lows. But after it has reached its full growth, it remains sta- tionary for some years, then from one cause or another dies. Trees by growing and by producing seed bring a twofold 8 FORESTS AND MANKIND gift to man. The products of their growth give him timber and firewood, paper, turpentine and rosin, tannin and maple sugar, fruits and nuts. By their seeds trees provide forever renewable crops of all those forest products that have become such intimate parts of our existence. Not always has man thought of trees as crops. Yet they are crops just as corn or wheat. When the time comes that the trees of a forest have reached full growth and have borne seed, they are mature and ready to be harvested. If they are not used, the day will come when some storm brings them crashing to the ground weak with disease and decay, a prey to insects and fungus. They will rot and all the energy of the sunlight, all the years of patient growth have been wasted. It is far better then that these ripe full-grown trees be used and that the ground they occupied be filled again with young and grow- ing trees. And although some trees, such as orchard or shade trees serve man best by living on undisturbed, the great army of trees, the soldiers of the forests best fulfill their fate and pur- pose when they are harvested by man just as a field of corn or wheat is harvested. It is the forester's problem to harvest wisely and understandingly so that forest may succeed forest of ever increasing usefulness and value. CHAPTER 2 HOW TREES GROW CHAPTER 2 HOW TREES GROW The friend of the tree is the friend of the race. — JOHN BURROUGHS. FOR countless generations mankind has wondered about na- ture and the innumerable processes of life and growth. From the infancy of his race he has contemplated with each succeed- ing springtime the slowly unfolding leaves and the blossoming of flowers. He watched the steady transformation of seedling to sapling and to mature tree. Regeneration, decay and death were ever before him as baffling, unexplained miracles. Only in very recent times has this attitude of wondering contemplation given way to study and experimentation, with the result that gradually the boundaries of these unknown realms have been pushed back. It will always be infinite this realm of the unknown, but during the past hundred years man has thrown more light upon it than in all the millions of generations that have gone before. By painstaking study and constant experimentation our knowledge of nature's work- ings is increasing at a tremendous pace, yet almost all we rightly know of tree growth has been gained within the last half dozen generations. We are still feeling our way. We stum- ble but we do learn, and year after year these dark frontiers retreat before the light of science. The miracles of yesterday become the explained facts of today. ii 12 FORESTS AND MANKIND Even that subtle, complex process by which wood is made from such intangible materials as air, sunlight, and water is opening up its secrets. We are coming to know a little more of how in the form of seeds, small trees are formed and packed within protective coverings, then broadcast within the forest world to distribute and so perpetuate their own independent spark of life. THE FIGHT FOR LIGHT Forest trees are crowded about by their fellows in a race for the life-giving sun- light. They must grow to survive. Those that fall behind in the race are cut off from the light and die. Trees of the field have no such competition. With abundant light from all sides they remain short and low branching throughout their lives. A tree seed is essentially a minute tree, with the beginnings of root, stem, and leaf already formed and surrounded by some kind of protective coat. With this embryo tree is packed a supply of food derived from the parent tree, on which it lives and grows until old enough to shift for itself. Seeds are of different shapes and many sizes, but whether they be small as HOW TREES GROW 13 a bead, or large as a football, they contain those two necessary elements, a young tree and stored food. From its parent tree the seed has also derived certain structures and the power to grow if conditions are favorable. Thus equipped it is cast forth. But conditions, in the world of trees are seldom favorable. Most of these millions of seeds scattered throughout a forest find it impossible even to begin the first processes of growth. Some fall in dry, sun-baked earth, or rocky ground, or on impenetrable mats of grass or beneath dense shade. There they die. But some more fortunate seed may find itself one day in early spring deeply embedded in a patch of moist earth on some sunny hillside. From the soil, water soaks into the seed. It swells and finally bursts its covering. Oxygen diffuses through its tissues and many chemical processes take place with great rapidity. The starchy food stored up in the seed becomes digested. The starch changes to sugar and these sugar solutions attract more water from the outside, thus increasing the swelling. Energy is set free by the action of oxygen on the sugar and promotes growth in many ways, but most of the energy is derived from the seedling's surroundings, much more than by the slow burning of the food stored within it. Soon the delicate first root emerges and elongates into the soil beneath. The materials that go to make up this root are derived from the seed and the soil water. During all this time heat is absorbed from the soil and air. And this heat, together with the energy set free from chemical changes in the seed makes the little seed machine operate just as the energy of burned coal makes a steam engine operate. No matter in what direction the root is pointed when it first emerges from the broken seed coat, its tip soon points down- i4 FORESTS AND MANKIND ward. This capacity of the root to turn vertically down is caused by a small mechanism in the very tip that operates somewhat as a spirit level, making the rootlet sensitive to the pull of gravitation. A little after the first root emerges, our seed pushes out its bud and the minute, tender leaves of the embryo enlarge and unfold. At first these leaves are white or yellowish like the root itself, but soon they turn green by virtue of a pigment called chlorophyll, a Greek word for leaf -green. Chlorophyll is in many respects like the red pigment of ani- mals. It is often said to be the most important substance in the world, for practically all food on earth is primarily based on its presence in green leaves, and without it all plants would die. Until now our seedling has been living and growing on food derived from its parent, but as soon as these young leaves become green a new chemical process begins, a process by which water from the soil and carbon dioxide from the air are decomposed and made over, producing sugar and oxygen. This process we know as photosynthesis. It can go on only in light, for light is its energy source, in much the same way as light supplies the energy for chemical changes that take place in a photographic plate, or the chemical changes that make dyes fade when exposed to sunlight. This ability of the plant to produce food from its surrounding elements is made possible by the power of the leaves to absorb and use the sun's rays. In the last analysis the sun is the source of all energy and activity on earth, for without it no leaf could manufacture food and all living things would perish. Even the coal that we burn today is the imprisoned sunlight of bygone ages, — energy taken from the sun's rays in the earlier days of the world by leaves of trees long dead. The sugar thus formed in the leaves AMONG THE REDWOODS HOW TREES GROW 15 moves to other parts of the plant and is the basis for the for- mation of all other foods. The oxygen escapes to the sur- rounding air. But not all of the sun 's energy absorbed by the leaf is put to work making food. Sometimes a leaf takes up fifty times as much sunshine and energy as it can use for food making. The rest is used to evaporate the water in the leaf, a process known as transpiration. The amount of water given off by a tree through transpiration is enormous. A white oak, of average size, during a single summer day will give off 150 gallons of water. A forest of such trees must give out as much moisture as a river and quite probably a wind blowing over the forest will absorb even more moisture than if it had blown over a lake of equal size. Plants require the same kinds of food as do animals, with the important difference that the plant manufactures its own food and animals obtain theirs by browsing on plants or de- vouring flesh of other animals. In one sense, and a very true sense, the tree is a factory where starches and sugars are manu- factured out of substances the tree finds in the earth beneath it, in the air above, and in the sunlight. There are just three principal groups of food for both plants and animals, — carbo- hydrates, fats and proteins. These are all formed in the living plant, primarily from the simple sugars. Just as animals can get food, only by taking it in from the outside, so the plant, once its stored-up food is exhausted, can make its own food only by taking-in the necessary substances from its surroundings. It takes its carbon dioxide from the air. The supply of water comes from the soil, entering into the roots and moving upward to the leaf. The soil holds its water 16 FORESTS AND MANKIND in films between the particles, and as the roots extend between the soil grains they draw this water in. Soil water, of course, is not pure. It contains many mineral substances, some of which are necessary for the continued growth of our seedling. These mineral substances are derived from the soil grains, which are partly particles of rock and partly the remains of dead plants and animals. A great deal of water and small amounts of these mineral salts are absorbed by the growing and expanding root system of the plant and are conducted to all parts of the tree. Most of the water is soon lost by evaporation through the leaves, but the other substances remain and take part in the young tree's chemical processes. So through spring and summer and late into autumn our seedling manufactures food for its growing roots, stem and branches. When winter comes it is already several inches tall and with roots developed and tightly embedded in the soil, the tree ceases from food making. It enters upon its long winter sleep, lying dormant except for these roots, which still continue to put on some growth. But already the tree has prepared for the coming of another spring. At the end of each branch it has fashioned a bud, within which tightly folded and protected, are new leaves for the coming year. Winter blasts may sweep the forest and bitter cold grip the woods, but through it all the tree waits dormant and changeless, and when once again with the returning sun the days grow warmer, the soil water is no longer frozen and again life stirs. The roots again absorb water and the leaves unfold ready to begin once more their work of making food. As time passes our seedling forest tree grows and branches HOW TREES GROW 17 rapidly, forming a complex root system extending through the soil, continually advancing into new spaces between the soil grains. A crown of leaves raised on a stem above the earth's surface is now exposed freely to light and air. Through numer- ous channels in the roots, stem, and branches and leaf veins the water and salts from the soil move upward and supply all living parts. The sugars and other substances formed in the leaves move downward. Because trees give ofT water by evaporation at a very rapid rate, the supply must be kept up or the leaves wilt and die. Water is constantly supplied to these leaves, taking the place of the water that is lost by the air and used by the plant. Just what forces operate to secure this rise of water to the tops of the trees have not yet been clearly worked out. The water is in general pulled up from above, and its rise depends fundament- ally on two well known properties of water, cohesion and adhesion. Some trees are different in their microscopic struc- ture and are able to raise water higher than others and it is possible that the height of any tree species is limited by this ability to raise soil water to the leaves. That may be why the dogwood can grow only to a scant twenty feet high, while the sequoia rears its head three hundred feet and more above the ground. Drawn up by these still obscure forces, the water rises into the leaves, the tree's laboratories for making sugar, and these newly made sugars move downward from the leaves building up the many growing parts of the plant. From the sugars other necessary foods, such as fats and proteins are made and go to form the tissues and structures of the living tree. By this patient addition year after year of millions of microscopically small i8 FORESTS AND MANKIND wood cells the tree grows in diameter and height. So as the years pass periods of growth and rest follow each other and the limits of each year's growth become marked in the wood of the trunk, where they appear as ever enlarging rings. By count- ing their number one can very closely tell the age of a tree. These rings also tell something of the changing conditions under which the tree lived. Some rings show years when the TREE CLASSES Foresters divide the trees of the forest into three main classes. The mature trees that are the tallest of the forest, he calls Dominant (D) trees. Those not quite tall enough to reach this class yet able to crowd into the sunlight are the co-dominant (CD). The trees that have fallen behind in the race and are cut of! from the sunlight, the forester calls Suppressed (S). It is from the Dominant class that the bulk of the world's timber comes. tree grew rapidly and some in which it put on hardly any growth at all — years when drouth may have prevented growth, or when some overshading tree stunted it. It has even been claimed that by the rings of the age-old sequoias, the oldest living things in the new world, we can read records of the dry years chronicled in the Bible. HOW TREES GROW 19 For some years all the wood throughout the trunk of our young tree helps to conduct sap up and down and because of this function it is called sapwood. But gradually there forms in the inner portion a cylinder of harder wood usually dark in color. The walls of the cells of this wood have been hardened and the living elements have died. This inner core is known as heartwood and is darker because of organic materials in the wood cell walls. No longer is it a living part of the tree. It no longer serves as a passage for sap, and its use now is to give strength and support to the trunk. Yet from man's standpoint, this heartwood is the most valued part of the tree. For from it comes the durable, strong lumber for which man has count- less needs. Should the heartwood remain soft, as it does in the willow, it rots easily and the tree may become hollow and weakened, and its wood of little service. This formation of heartwood begins at varying ages of a tree's life — fifteen years in the oak and forty in the ash. But as the tree grows older the inner rings of sapwood turn to heart- wood and a new layer of sapwood is formed each year next to the bark. So as the tree ages, its trunk grows thicker, and the heartwood increases in thickness, but the thickness of the sapwood remains about the same. In addition to the formation of wood each year, the tree forms a layer of bark. This bark often becomes quite thick, sometimes a foot or more through, as in the sequoias. Some- times, as in the sycamore, it scales off as rapidly as it is formed and remains like a thin envelope about the tree. Were it not for this tendency of the bark to peel, we could tell a tree's age by counting the bark layers just as readily as by counting the annual layers of wood. 20 FORESTS AND MANKIND As the years pass our tree grows taller, puts forth branches and at last takes its place with the other trees of the forest. It is now ready in its turn to produce seed and scatter them over the land — to spread and perpetuate the life that came to it from its own parent. These tree seeds are formed in the same way as in the smaller plants — by means of the union of two cells formed in the tree-flowers. On most trees, as the elm or pine, these flowers are so inconspicuous we seldom notice them. On other species, the horsechestnut and magnolia, the flowers are so large that the trees when in bloom look like huge bouquets. Big, brightly colored flowers may be one of nature's advertis- ing schemes, for they attract bees and other insects, and these, as they brush against the flowers in search of food help dis- tribute pollen to other trees and aid in producing fertile seed. Other flowers depend on perfume for their attraction to insects. But big or little, seen or unseen, these flowers bloom high up in the tree top and in them the union of reproductive cells occurs, the germ of life is born, and a fertile seed formed. They are many shapes and sizes, these seeds. Sometimes they hang singly among the branches as in the acorns of the oak, some- times within a cone, as in the pines and spruces, sometimes in a fruit as the apple or pear. But each seed has within it almost microscopically small this tiny tree of its own species and a supply of food that will provide energy for growth until it begins to manufacture food for itself. Numberless seeds each year are formed and sent forth — carried by wind and rain, by streams and even by animals. The squirrel himself is one of nature's best foresters for he often gathers twice as many cones as he will eat, and the surplus that he has hidden away, may form a new grove of pine trees. HOW TREES GROW 21 But only those seeds fortunate enough to find a friendly con- spiracy of soil, sunlight, and moisture win through to begin the new forest. And even for them the battle is only just begun. Before them lies a long century of battle against other trees, against storm, drought, disease and fire. And the later fortunes of these bits of tree life become part of the story of the forests themselves. CHAPTER 3 THE FOREST CHAPTER 3 THE FOREST A virgin forest is a battle ground where varied and multitudinous forces meet and fight for supremacy. — JULIA ELLEN ROGERS. SOMEWHAT as men have come together to live with one another in villages and cities, rather than pursue solitary exist- ences, so trees over large areas are found growing in close con- tact with their neighbors. These associations of trees we call forests. But it would be a mistake to think of a forest as merely a piece of land with trees growing on it. It is much more com- plex than that. There is an interplay of forces, a setting up of new conditions that make the forest a distinct unit in nature. And between all these contending and cooperating forms of life that go to make up a forest there is also a very delicate balance. Every tree is affected for good or bad by the trees that surround it. Even the soil in a forest is different from the soil outside. It teems with countless living things, some made visible only by powerful microscopes. Without this soil life the forest could not live, for it helps provide the tree roots with certain needed foods. Neither could these soil dwellers live without the forest and although we know very little about this form of life, we do know that in some way these microscopic organisms are as necessary to forest growth as the sunlight or rain. 25 26 FORESTS AND MANKIND The innumerable insects, the rarer forms of wild life, big and little, that find shelter and food within the forest, make their own contributions by helping in seed fertilization and in carrying seeds beyond the shadow of the mother tree. A forest then is essentially a partnership of trees, plants, and animal life. It is a portion of the earth where trees, soil life, animals, and plants are living in close association and have come to depend in varying degrees on each other for their wel- fare, even though in another sense they are often at war, one with the other. One might think of them as friendly enemies. Under forest conditions trees themselves are constantly waging war with each other — the large trees bully the little ones and the little ones fight among themselves. The reason is evident. In forest life, much as in human life, there are not enough of life's necessary things to go around. There is only just so much open sunlight above, and so much soil moisture and fertility beneath, and only to the strongest and most vigorous trees the rewards of the struggle fall. And, as in man's life, so in the forest many contenders drop by the wayside and fail. They had not the stuff to succeed. They were not well equipped for the struggle, or they were handicapped by the many accidents that life brings. To trace the growth of a forest from the time the first seeds open until the trees grow old and decay is to tell the life story of a tree community. And to reduce that life story to its utmost simplicity one may imagine that a thick growth of pine and maple and oak trees has been cleared of every tree for a mile square within the heart of the forest. Fire too may have burned over this area so fiercely that everything — trees and seedlings and even the seeds that lay in the ground — had been destroyed. THE FOREST 27 It is now a desolate area without life. But about the edges the old forest remains untouched by axe or fire and the trees from this will scatter seed for short distances into the burned area. Squirrels and birds venturing still further will carry acorns from the oak and seed from the pines and maple and about the edges of this wilderness the same kinds of trees that grew there before will soon spring up again. AN ALL-AGED FOREST Nature's forests are usually made up of trees of all ages from seedlings to veterans. The death of the old fellow in the foreground has opened up a space seized upon by hundreds of seedlings. On both sides are full grown dominant trees and crowded between them is a thrifty grove of younger trees fighting for light and root space. But that is only a fringe. It would take many years, perhaps centuries, before the inner part of the burned forest could be covered with trees if nature had to depend on this slow method of reforesting and by that time the soil would be so baked with the hot sun and washed by the heavy rains that tree seeds would have difficulty in finding hospitable abiding places. Nature has a quicker means. Fortunately there are certain trees 28 FORESTS AND MANKIND with very light seeds well adapted to travelling great distances in the wind — poplar, birch, and sycamore. So within a few years our burned and cut area probably has become completely covered with a thick growth of trees quite different from the ones that the fires and axe had destroyed. Poplar seeds and birch seeds, have blown in, perhaps from many miles away, and the young seedlings of these species are springing up thick as bristles on a brush. They are not very valuable for lumber, these trees, but they serve a very useful purpose in that they protect the soil against hot sun and driving rain, and each year dropping their leaves they help to build up the soil and make it more fertile. At this stage in the regeneration of our tract we have in place of the original pine, maple and oak, a thick young forest of birch and poplar and around the edges of the old forest a fringe of young oak, maple and pine that have sprung up from seeds cast by the neighboring trees. Gradually during the next twenty or fifty years, scattered by one agency or another, seeds of pine and maple and beech find their way throughout the area. Birds bring some. Squirrels others. Streams and wind may carry still others and so the seeds of the original forest trees make their way, not with any regularity, but scattered here and there back into the waste places. These newly-born trees are protected from drying out and from being withered by the hot sun because of the protect- ing shade cast by the poplar and birch. These act from now on as nurse trees to the young pines and hardwoods. Beneath the light shade of these nurse trees the new seedlings have ample light for growth and in a few years they spring up about their former nurses and overshadow them. At this stage we find a scattered stand of pine and maple and oak THE FOREST 29 thrusting its way above a lower story of birch and poplar. Gradually the higher trees deprive this lower story of light. The stand of poplar and birch is being crowded out and will soon be gone. A little later, the pines, maples, and oaks sow their own seeds over the area and in the next tree generation they will have crowded out all other species. Once again nature has brought back the same forest that grew there before the days of the cutting and burning. Long and roundabout is this process of restoring the original forest trees after destructive cutting and heavy fires. Sometimes it is centuries before replacement is complete. In parts of the Adirondacks where fires have burned not only the trees but destroyed the soil itself many hundreds of years will pass before trees of any kind can grow there. When undisturbed by man or fire, nature works constantly toward the perpetuation of certain forest types. These are called climax types, for they represent the type of forest best fitted to survive in that particular place. Although this climax type changes with the region, with altitude, and often with the soil, it is the ultimate type that nature will grow in that particular environment. Even on opposite sides of the same hill we may find different types of climax forest. In some regions it may be our mixture of pine, oak and maple. In others a mixture of white and red pine and in still others, as over a great portion of the west, yellow pine alone is the climax type. But for each locality and soil type, there is a species or com- bination of species that does best there— the so called climax type. Toward this type nature is constantly working. Man or fire may for a time overthrow nature's purpose and other trees may come in and temporarily seize the soil, but gradually if 30 FORESTS AND MANKIND undisturbed the climax type for that locality will come back and reconquer its old home. Now if our suppositional forest is left without further inter- ference from man, the trees will mature and at last become decadent with age. Perhaps this year or next a pine will crash down, heavy with old age, or the wind will overthrow some decayed and aged oak. Each fallen tree opens a little space in the forest and in each such opening, seedlings of the surround- ing trees spring up and soon our forest will have trees of all ages growing within it as other trees die and fall. So through- out the centuries growth keeps pace with decay and death. This forest of ours has become what we call an "all-age forest." Trees of all ages compose it. And it is this type of forest which is most frequently met in nature. In the forest the battle of life begins early. At first in the openings left by fallen trees and in the greater spaces created by man and fire, the seedlings that spring up have enough light for their leaves and moisture and soil room for their roots. Each is free to grow without interference by its neigh- bors. The life and death fight for supremacy has not yet begun, but as the trees grow, their roots reach out to invade each other's supply of moisture and soil food, their branches begin to touch and cut off each other's light From now on it is a merciless fight for life — a fight that continues without ceasing until the battle is lost or won. During this early competitive stage seedlings put all their energy into growing tall that they may receive the life-giving sunlight and not be overshadowed by some faster-growing neighbor. Little hope exists for the stragglers. The branches of their victorious fellows close above them and, deprived of light, IMPROVING ON NATURE Nature, unaided, is often an indifferent forester. In a natural forest many trees are stunted and suppressed beneath wide spreading trees. In other parts of the forest may be large spaces without tree growth at all. In forests planted by man, trees are equally spaced and the trees are uniform in size and growth. Every foot of soil is used. So a well planted acre of forest produces several times as much wood as a natural forest. 31 32 FORESTS AND MANKIND the vanquished trees become dwarfed, sickly and die. Of all the trees that may begin in this race for life on an acre of forest soil — sometimes a hundred thousand at the very start — only a very few, perhaps only two or three, survive to form a part of the mature forest. So trees battle against one another in a life and death struggle for sunlight and moisture. Yet they help one another too, in affording mutual protection from wind and storm and from breakage by heavy wet snows. In keeping the ground be- neath them moist and soft they create conditions favorable to tree growth and tree reproduction not only for themselves, but for their neighbors. And always, so far as man is concerned, this close association of trees in the forest with its necessity for rapid height growth serves the useful purpose of crowding the trees so that early in life their lower branches are cut off from light and die. Trees of the forest are often free of limbs for a hundred feet above the ground. The tree that grows alone and receives light from all sides is usually shorter than its forest-born neighbor. It produces knotty lumber, it is bushier, and its trunk is thicker just above 'the roots and tapers more rapidly. Although more picturesque, open grown trees are of little use for lumber. Our forest tree, competing with its neighbor in an everlasting search for sunlight grows tall to escape being overshadowed and killed and so produces a long straight trunk that gives man his most valuable timber. The forest types of the world differ enormously. They differ in rate of growth, in size, density, species, and in a dozen other ways. We have one kind of forest here and another there, changing as the climate, altitude and soil changes. We have as 5 ill 5^ THE FOREST 33 we have seen, transition types where one form of forest merges into another. From north to south, from coast to mountain top, the traveller finds the forests changing. Differences between the types are often profound. Some trop- ical forests are so dense the explorer must literally carve his path with axe and knife. On the other extreme forests in parts of our Rocky Mountain states are so scattered one can drive a car through them. In the Orient are the "dwarf forests," whose tree tops come no higher than a tall man's head— in California and Australia are forests two and three hundred feet high. Some trees grow only in narrowly restricted regions like the cypress which is found over a very small part of the United States, or the sequoia which grows only on the coast of north- ern California. Others are the wanderers of the tree kingdom — the willow and aspen. One finds them from coast to coast and from the shadow of the Arctic Circle to far south of the snow line. The number of different tree species varies enormously throughout the world. Some regions possess many species, some few. Over that great stretch of country covered by north Russia, Sweden, and Norway, the forests contain only about half a dozen tree species. In the hardwood forests of the East, one can find ten times that many in an afternoon's walk. Tropical forests have thousands of known species and perhaps hundreds more not yet discovered. About eight hundred different tree species grow in the United States. Some of them are practically useless to man and are classed as forest weeds. It is one of the objects of forestry to replace these weeds of the forest with trees of greater value and usefulness. Some trees are more exacting than others. These we find 34 FORESTS AND MANKIND only in the best localities — they are the aristocrats of the forest world. They need deep, well-watered, fertile soil and direct sunlight. Others less ambitious, more philosophic, are able to get along with very little of nature's favor. We find them out in the arid places and on steep hillsides or even clinging to the barren rock. And some others that have been unable to grow tall and reach the sunlight, like their more hardy companions have learned to get along without. The dogwood or the beech, for example, — we find them quite thrifty and apparently con- tented doing well with the few patches of light that fall from between the crowns of their more lofty companions. These we call tolerant trees for they are able to tolerate deep shade. They form the understory of the forest while above them tower the taller trees that are intolerant of shade and that form the dominant trees of the forest. The presence of species of varying tolerance makes the forest a many-storied structure rising from the low tolerant species, up through the intermediate trees to the great dominant top story — the trees that reach up into the open sunlight and lord it over all the forest world. It is from these dominant trees that man obtains his most valuable lumber. CHAPTER 4 THE FORESTS OF LONG AGO CHAPTER 4 THE FORESTS OF LONG AGO The true pages of the past are the rocks of the earth's crust. — BERRY. THE forests of the world are constantly changing— although the changes are perceptible only over centuries. Since their far- away beginnings they have been changing in extent, in appear- ance and in the species composing them. Their boundaries have moved back and forth like the tides of great seas. Existing in a world that, itself has never remained the same, this power to change has been necessary to forest life. For every living thing, animal or plant, must adapt itself to changing environ- ment or perish. Nothing is static. Temperatures rise and fall. Rainfall increases or grows less. The soil itself changes. And with all these shifting conditions plants and trees, if they are to survive, must keep pace and adapt themselves by changing too. When plant life first began in 'the world, it probably started under much more simple and uniform conditions than now exist. Probably the cradle of life was on the warm shores of some shallow sea, with abundant rainfall, hot sunlight, and an almost constant temperature. Every condition was favorable for life and so the first organisms were simple. There was no need for them to be complex at first — not until later. Later as plants spread to less hospitable places, or as conditions of life grew 37 38 FORESTS AND MANKIND more difficult a need arose for more specialized structures — more complex machinery for existence. So all the trend of nature seems to be from simple structures to complex. The earliest plant of which we have any knowl- edge is a little water plant, a relative of the seaweed of today. It was a simple organism, undeveloped as to roots, stem, or leaf, but the struggle for life and food in its chosen environ- ment was not intense and this lowly plant was able to survive and reproduce itself abundantly in those far-off days of the world's infancy. Geologists still find its fossil remains back in the oldest rocks that show traces of any remains of life. Then with the passing centuries, as conditions grew more varied, and as life began spreading to various parts of the world, both ani- mals and plants were faced with the necessity of keeping pace with their surroundings. That is why we have so many kinds of fishes, animals, and plants — different environments, or dif- ferent adaptations to the same environment have called into being hosts of families and species each different one from the other. As portions of 'the earth became colder, animals de- veloped heavy fur to protect them; as other portions became drier many plants found ways of storing up water in their leaves and stems. One locality calls forth one characteristic, another demands something entirely different. And just as we find the ancestors of modern man had different characteristics caused by different environment, so the ancestors of the mod- ern tree are, for the same reason, profoundly varied in appearance and in structure. It is here we touch one of the basic laws of life itself. For in any study of plants or animals one is confronted over and over again with the fact that all life is engaged in a perpetual task 2 > fst ill 4iJh S | /sags C o « y .2 o, o 40 FORESTS AND MANKIND of preserving itself in the face of conditions that are forever in a state of change. Sometimes these changes are so great or so sudden that they overwhelm life. Usually they are extremely slow and the various forms of life are constantly changing, too — making adaptations. One sees that a tree in the dense forest will grow tall and slender to reach the light. But the same kind of tree in the open spaces does not have to adapt itself to this life and death struggle for light and so does not grow tall. Plants of the desert country where rainfall is scarce must conserve their moisture and have created special methods for storing up the moisture they are able to raise from the dry, reluctant soil. At the other extreme the palms in the rainy por tions of South America get too much water and have produced huge leaves that drain the rainfall outward and so keep the water away from their roots. Both are useful adaptations. When conditions change too rapidly for a plant or animal species to keep pace, it dies. We say it has become extinct. It has failed to make corresponding changes with its changing world and so falls out of the race. Many thousands of species have fallen by the wayside since the dawn of time and prob- ably the number of tree species that exists today is only a small remnant compared with the numberless kinds that no longer live. One may better understand the forests of today by learning something of the ancestral forests that gave them birth. One gains a sense of continuity down long ages of skillful adjust- ments. Yet in doing this one must travel in a few pages across many million years getting just a passing glimpse of the changing world of past ages, and of the changing trees. If all these changes seem rapid and sweeping it is only because of THE FORESTS OF LONG AGO 41 the rapidity of our glimpse — somewhat as if a motion picture were speeded up before our eyes. Actually these changes were often no more rapid than the changes going on today. In all this study of the remote past one is able to look back through the years into the earlier days of the world because of the rocks that preserve for us remnants of leaves, seeds, twigs, and sometimes whole trees, that have been lifeless now for millions of years. These remnants of tree life give us a more or less continuous picture, although here and there wide breaks exist. It is a little like reading a book from which some- times pages and sometimes whole chapters have been torn. These rocks begin their story for us back at the earliest traces of living things for the plant is the oldest form of life. Millions of years before the first tree existed, long before man walked the earth, or any land animal lived, the rocks show us that early forms of plant life were in existence. Some are remote but recognizable ancestors of trees and among them are the great club mosses and the early fern-like plants. From these forms of life, from the tree ferns and cycads came the early trees. First the conifers — the cone-bearing trees — gradually developed and became the world's most important type of vegetation. These ancestors of our present pines and spruces are of enormous antiquity and are present in the oldest rocks in which any of the land plants have been preserved to us. Gradually these cone bearers spread over the world. Men speak today of that era as the "Age of Conifers," for during that time the world possessed a greater abundance and variety of conifers than has ever existed before or since. For ages they held sovereignty over the world of plants and at the end of this era came the beginning of the modern forest trees. 42 FORESTS AND MANKIND Back in those earlier days of tree life, the continent of North America looked quite different and possessed a more temper- ate climate. Rainfall was more abundant. The weather was warmer, more uniform in temperature and there was a total absence of frost. The Rocky Mountains had not yet been formed and the whole continent was low and heavily wooded from coast to coast. At that time there were no regions of tree- less areas like our Great Plains, neither was there any abrupt difference between the forests of the east and the west. Greater uniformity existed both in the climate and topography and conditions were everywhere favorable to tree life. The cold, inhospitable wastes of the Arctic in those days were warm tree-covered areas where even the heat-loving fig and palm found favorable conditions and conifers flourished and grew over all the land. It was an ideal world for them. They were the highest form of plant life in it. Time passed. Many thousands of years. The outlines of North America had meanwhile been changing. The Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean mingled their waters by means of a great inland sea that cut through the continent. Gradually this inland sea subsided and a large variety of tropical plants invaded the Gulf region from the south. Then came a great and important change. Following the conifers arose a class of trees that are commonly called broad- leaf trees because their leaves are not needle-like, such as the leaves of the spruce and the pine, but broad and flat like the maple and hickory. These broad-leaf trees were of a later type. They were more complex in their nature than the cone bearers and better able to survive and establish themselves and their descendants. They were the "moderns" of the plant world and THE FORESTS OF LONG AGO 43 their coming brought profound changes to all forest life. They invaded the land and as the centuries passed they have gradu- ally taken possession of the world's most favorable portions, forcing the pine and spruce and the fir back until they occupy now the less fertile places, the high mountainous countries, the dry sandy soils, and the desert's edge. In a sense the world has become and still is an immense battle-field between the cone-bearers and the trees with broad leaves. Gradually the cone-bearers are losing and being forced out. During those times of the broad-leaf trees first invasions lived a few trees that exist in our forest today — the sequoia, the bald cypress, and the ghinko. The rest — the thousands of others — have perished and been replaced by more recent species. Meanwhile the Rockies were being pushed up into existence bringing about important changes in climate, for when that tremendous barrier cut off the moisture-laden winds from the Pacific, the country just east of them became too dry for tree growth and so the plains country came into being. But this long period of warmth when the fig and the palm grew far to the north and when tropical forests flourished in Alaska did not last. It was followed by a glacial period, an age of ice. A great ice cap moved down out of the north, forcing both animal and plant life before it, grinding everything in its way to extinction. We believe there were four distant ice inva- sions and between each the climate was about as we know it today. This ice sheet was a tremendous modifier of tree species. Some species were able to keep ahead of the ice, for their seeds borne by the winds or carried by rivers, birds, or animals were scattered to the south of the ice flow and so the species was 44 FORESTS AND MANKIND saved from extinction. Many that were unable to migrate in this way, or could not cross barriers of water and moun- tains became extinct. Some, like the sequoia, were almost totally engulfed, but in a few protected places managed to survive. Then the ice moved back and the great wealth of plant life in the south gradu- ally followed the retreating glaciers northward. Years passed, centuries, and another sheet of ice came down out of the north. And as each succes- sive blanket of ice returned, there were corresponding waves of plant and animal life moving back and forth and ever changing as the climate and other conditions changed. It must have brought multi- tudes of new species into ex- istence just as it must have ex- EXTINCT SPECIES OF TULIP POPLAR Specimens i, 2 and 3 are fossil leaves of a species closely resembling our own tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), whose leaf is shown as number 4. The others have become extinct. THE FORESTS OF LONG AGO 45 terminated multitudes. One faces the fact that the present type of plants and trees inhab- iting the earth today is only one of the many different types that must have existed since plants began. This, then, in briefest out- line is the epic of plant life in this world of ours. The be- ginning of it all extends back many millions of years — it is a continuous pageant of life passing across the centuries. First the simplest kinds of tiny water plants, later the ferns and club mosses, then the more highly specialized cone-bearing trees and last and most complex of all, the broad-leaf trees, the highest forms of plant life in the world today. These changes still go on for just as the climate is changing slowly, GINKGO LEAVES — PAST AND PRESENT The three upper leaves (1-2-3) are fossil remains of leaves from the ances- tors of the maidenhair tree or ginkgo biloba. The lower leaf (4) is a modern specimen. .4 46 FORESTS AND MANKIND hardly perceptibly, so the trees are changing. Behind the veil of the future may lie tree forms of which man has never dreamed, higher forms still better equipped to live and multi- ply. For that is the way life seems to be working, always toward organisms that will carry the spark of life safely on and perpetuate it in the face of adverse conditions. But not to tree species alone are these forest changes con- fined. Tree areas, too, are shrinking and expanding today no less than in the remote past. Forests are invading the desert in one region and retreating before adverse conditions in an- other. The cypress, for example, last living representative of its race, seems to be slowly shrinking in its area of distribution. Others are thrusting their boundaries forward — seizing ground once held by other species. The species of our older trees have become less numerous. Once the sun never set on the liriodendron, that magnificent tree we variously call tulip tree, tulip poplar, yellow poplar, and white wood. It grew once in all parts of the globe and at least nine different species have been found. Now there are only two species left, one in America and the other in far-off China. From the rest of the world the tulip tree has vanished utterly. So it seems that the older forms die and new ones take their place. Changing conditions — changing forms. And although in our modern forest we have here and there isolated types like the sequoia, successful survivals that have held their own in spite of ceaseless change, still the woods of today are quite different from those of other days and these too are constantly changing. Only a few, the sequoia, ginkgo, and one or two others remain like vestiges of the remote past to link our forests of today with the forests of long ago. CHAPTER 5 FORESTS OF THE WORLD CHAPTER 5 FORESTS OF THE WORLD Forests are important in the life of every nation because of their influ- ence on the water supply, on agriculture, and on the general welfare. — RAPHAEL ZON. EXCEPT for the Polar regions, we know less about the tim- bered portions of our world than any other. Perhaps one rea- son for this is the fact that when early man began migrating over the face of the earth, he kept to the coasts and the water- ways, leaving the interiors of the dark, trackless forests severely alone. Then too, the superstitions of early man, and of many primitive tribes today cause him to avoid the forests. Priests and medicine men still tell fearsome tales that picture the for- ests as the abiding places of monsters and evil spirits. The Black Hills, the only forested portion of South Dakota was once looked on by the Indians as haunted ground and only vis- ited in search of food. Perhaps, a little of this heritage comes down to us, for at first, most of us feel a certain misgiving when we go into the deep forest. We talk in lower tones; we are not quite at ease. But the open places within the forest have always been hos- pitable to man. They hold grass for his flocks and sunlight for his crops. Man is not essentially a forest dweller, but rather a creature of the open lands near the forest. He is dependent on 49 50 FORESTS AND MANKIND the forest for a great part of his living, yet spends most of his time just outside its borders. Until a very few years ago we had no definite idea of the extent or composition of the world's forests. Until rather re- cently it was not important that we should have this knowl- edge for the forests of the Amazon, or of north Russia were so remote from the crowded places where man most needed wood that it made little difference whether those far away portions of the globe were forested, or as treeless as the Sahara. But times change. Each hour that we are able to cut from the schedule of train and steamer, each penny that we can save in freight charges, bring us nearer the rest of the world and make the products of other countries more important. Today no civ- ilized nation is independent of other countries. There is a con- stant interchange of products throughout the world and the amount of timber in the forests of Russia or South America has now a part to play in the world's economy. For in these days of cheap transportation, timber is being shipped across the earth and already the treeless countries are tapping the for- est wealth of lands thousands of miles distant. Although the forests like all other living things have been constantly changing they have changed most rapidly since man made his appearance in the world. Man has been the big disturbing factor in modifying the face of the earth. In pre- historic times the forest undoubtedly covered a greater part of the globe than now. For his crops man has cleared away much of the earth's surface. He has burned over large areas that he may have grass for his flocks and herds. In some regions he has completely annihilated the forest. In Great Britain ninety- five percent of her original great forests is gone. In the still 52 FORESTS AND MANKIND older countries of France and Italy and Greece, between eighty per cent and ninety per cent of the forests are destroyed. Swe- den and Finland are the only countries of the Old World that still have as much as half of their original forests left. We are passing through an age of rapid forest destruction. Some of this destruction was inevitable. Some was necessary and right. It is good economy to clear tree growth from the fertile lands to raise the world's foodstuffs. Today the world's forests cover about seven and a half billion acres, or about one- fifth of the earth's land area. It is hardly possible to conceive of an area of that magnitude, but much of this so-called forest in reality is composed of brush and low, scrubby timber such as grows in the Arctic Circle. It will never be of importance to man and the really productive forests of the world cover a much smaller area— about sixteen per cent of the land surface, or three and two-tenths acres of forest land for every human being in the world. Russia has the most extensive forests of any country. Next come the British Empire, third Brazil, and fourth, the United States. These countries together have within their borders nearly two-thirds of the forest land of the world. The remain- ing third is divided among more than fifty nations. The continents have been unequally placed from the stand- point of the world's timber supply. North America has about twenty per cent. Africa and Europe with their thickly inhabited countries have only ten per cent apiece. South America and Asia each have about twenty-eight per cent but the situation in these two continents is entirely different, since Asia teems with people and South America is very sparsely populated. From the standpoint of national development the amount of FORESTS OF THE WORLD 53 timber in a country is less important than the amount per in- habitant, and Asia, in spite of her great forest areas, possesses only two and a half acres for each of her people, while South America has thirty acres of timber for every man, woman, or child. Of the European countries, Finland, Sweden, and Rus- sia are richest in forest wealth. Canada has the largest forest area on the North American continent, but a large part of it is in the far north where growth is slow and the timber of little value. In Mexico only about fifteen per cent of the country is forested. Once she possessed extensive forests, but more than a thousand years ago an Indian civilization flourished there and before it disappeared from the face of the earth deforested millions of acres of Mexico's wood- lands. In the United States about one-sixth of our original forest land now bears virgin timber. In three centuries our forests have retreated westward and are now so distant from the cen- ters of demand that today we pay two hundred and fifty mil- lions of dollars as our yearly freight bill to transport wood from the far off forest to the lumber yard. As the number of people increases in the world there will be a tendency for forested areas to further decrease to make more open land for food crops. The proportion of forested land will vary with the region. The poorer, unfertile lands, as well as the lands whose climate is unfavorable to agriculture, will always remain in forest. Low level countries will be able to get along with a smaller portion of their land in forest than the mountainous nations. But for both there will be limits of defor- estation beyond which it will be unsafe to go. The limits of safety of deforestation are governed by other factors than the 54 FORESTS AND MANKIND problem of wood supply. Rainfall, stream flow, humidity and temperature all seem to be adversely affected by deforestation. Each year the world cuts about fifty-six billion cubic feet of wood. Of this a little less than half is of the size and quality that make it suitable for sawing lumber — the lumber we use for building and for general construction. The rest — more than half — is small, inferior material cut chiefly for firewood. North America produces half of the wood cut in the world, and the conifers or softwoods supply about three-fourths of the sawing timber. It is the conifers, then, whose perpetuation is essential so that the world may continue to be kept in timber. How much wood is grown each year in the world's forests ? That is a hard question to answer. We believe that it is much less than the amount consumed and it is certainly much less than could be grown if the forests were properly handled. In the virgin forests of the world such as the great forests of the Amazon and of north Russia, the amount of wood that grows each year is balanced by death and decay. So far as adding to the world's wood supply, these forests produce noth- ing. They are not creating great reserves of timber against our future need — they are merely holding their own. Foresters estimate that about thirty-eight billion cubic feet is grown yearly. They believe that if all the forests of the world were placed in a condition of ideal growth, they could prob- ably be made to produce as much as three hundred and fifty billion feet. But the world's forests will never reach the max- imum production for even though scientific forestry may some- day greatly increase the rate of growth of valuable species the area of forest is bound to decrease. In the face of this certain de- crease of forest area throughout the world it becomes an in- AMERICAN 228 cubkfeet EUROPEAN 36 cubic fret EGYPTIAN 2 cubic feet WORLD WOOD CHOPPERS We Americans are lavish wood users. Each year for every man, woman and child we average 228 cubic feet of wood, enough to make a solid cube of wood six feet on a side. 56 FORESTS AND MANKIND creasingly important problem to so manage the remaining for- ests that they will produce more than they possibly can under natural conditions. Compared to other countries, we Americans are a nation of lavish wood users. The average citizen of the world uses thirty- two cubic feet a year. We in America require two hundred and twenty-eight cubic feet. Finland exceeds even that, for there each person consumes an average of three hundred cubic feet yearly. Man for man America uses five times as much wood as Europe. The amount of wood used by a nation depends on many things. It depends on racial habits, standards of living, and stage of development. Countries like Egypt, use only about two cubic feet per person. With the exception of Sweden alone, the United States sends more of its timber to foreign countries than any nation in the world. At the same time, it imports about as much as it sends out. North Europe and northern North Amer- ica ship large quantities of conifers for construction to all the other continents. It is not always the most heavily-timbered countries that send the greatest quantities of wood to foreign ports. South Amer- ica which among all the regions of the world is best provided with forests imports twice as much as she exports. That is partly because it is cheaper for her to buy timber abroad than to go back into the still inaccessible forests of her own con- tinent and partly because the kinds of wood she requires are not found abundantly in her own land. The forests of the world fall into three main groups: conifers or softwoods, temperate hardwoods, and tropical hardwoods. The last two groups might be combined into one great class of FORESTS OF THE WORLD 57 hardwoods, but so very different are the hardwoods of the tem- perate zone and those of the tropics that it makes for clarity to divide them. The conifers are the most important for gen- eral construction timber and for paper making; the hardwoods, both temperate and tropical, are used principally for high grade furniture and special materials. The temperate and tropical hardwoods seldom mingle, but the demarcations between con- ifers and temperate hardwoods are not always distinct since they often occupy the same forest soil over large areas. Such forests we call mixed forests, or mixed hardwoods and soft- woods. Forests that contain only one kind of tree we call pure forests — thus an area occupied entirely by pine is a pure pine forest. For the world as a whole, conifers occupy thirty-five per cent of the forest area, temperate hardwoods sixteen per cent, and tropical hardwoods forty-nine per cent. Almost half of the earth's forest area is covered with tropical hardwoods, but since three-fourths of the people of the world live in the tem- perate zone, it is natural that the conifers and the temperate hardwoods should be better known and that they should have suffered most at the hands of man. On the forests of the North Temperate Zone alone, the world depends for over ninety per cent of its construction materials. The tropical hardwoods are destined to become important forests of tomorrow. When we come to learn what they con- tain and the many uses to which they may be put, tropical timbers will be shipped in greater quantities to those countries of the world now needing wood. It is doubtful, however, if they can ever take the place of the softwoods for construction timber in the world's market. 58 FORESTS AND MANKIND Forest statistics are subject to error and any prophecies based upon them must be based on uncertainties. But it is probable that today we have in the world more than enough forests to supply, under proper management, the world's wood needs. Theoretically there is no deficiency. But practically, forestry must concern itself, not with the amount of existing forests, but with the amount and kind of forests available for current practical use. Here we find the great centers of civilization very deficient indeed. So from this standpoint the problem of for- estry begins to assume the aspect of seeking some means for perpetuating and increasing the growth and quality of those forests most available and most useful to man. CHAPTER 6 FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES CHAPTER 6 FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES The American people have not yet acquired the sense of timber as a crop. — WARD SHEPARD. THE forests of the United States are unrivaled, among the world's timberlands, for the number of commercially impor- tant tree species they contain. In Russia one finds greater ex- panses of solid, unbroken timber but in our country alone, ex- ist such enormously great areas of forest made up of so many distinct species of tree growth. Over eight hundred and fifty species reach tree size, and in addition to these species are a number of tree varieties and hybrids that bring the total dif- ferent forms of tree life close to twelve hundred. Today over one hundred and eighty have economic importance and as time passes, this number constantly increases, for new uses are being found for species that yesterday were considered value- less. This multitude of tree species and of forest types in the United States is partly the result of our great range in climate, elevation, and soil. All these varying factors were bound to result in a great diversity of natural vegetation. But the supreme dictator of the general type of vegetation to be found in a region is rainfall. Very deficient rainfall produces deserts; — sparse rainfall, grassland. Only where we have fairly abundant rain is a region able to support trees. 61 62 FORESTS AND MANKIND For the United States as a whole, grass land occupies thirty per cent of our land area, desert twenty-two per cent, and for- est land forty-eight per cent. The forests themselves form two broad belts of tree life, one a belt of western forests extending inland from the Pacific and the other a belt of eastern forests bordering the Atlantic. In the central United States a broad prairie of grass land lies between these two belts, known as the Great Plains. This area in ages past fostered tree growth, and today is treeless probably as the result of many factors — chiefly climatic changes that decreased the rainfall. Fires of long ago may also have played a role here in preventing in- vasions of tree growth that would bring these plains back to forest. But whatever caused these great expanses of grass land, they have effectually acted as a broad barrier to keep the species of east and west from mingling and so have been one cause of the differences in the composition of our eastern and west- ern forests. Originally four fifths of our forests were in the eastern United States. But because settlement began on the Atlantic Coast and because the East today supports eighty per cent of our total population, the eastern forests have suffered greater and much more rapid depletion than the western. Not until the partial exhaustion of our eastern forests through lumbering and fire were men forced to go south and west for their wood. These two forest belts are quite dissimilar in extent, as well as composition. Along the eastern seaboard, the first settlers in this country found a heavy, unbroken forest extending over more than a million square miles. The western forests are much less extensive, covering about two hundred thousand square miles almost equally divided into two parts, one in the FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES 63 Rocky Mountain region and the other in the Pacific Northwest. The eastern forests were made up chiefly of broad-leaf trees and covered mountains and valleys in a great unbroken mantle of green. The western forests, on the other hand, are composed principally of softwoods and are interrupted by many treeless REGIONS OF NATURAL VEGETATION NATURAL VEGETATION OF THE U. S. The three great divisions of natural vegetation in the United States arc forest, grass and desert. Rainfall is the most important factor in the creation of these regions. valleys. In them, unlike the eastern forests, we find very abrupt changes in species. The eastern forests contain over four hundred species of broad-leaf trees. Many of them extend over large areas and have high market value. The Western forests have about one hundred broad-leaf species, very few of them valuable to man. The western forests are essentially softwood or evergreen 64 FORESTS AND MANKIND growth and contain over twice as many conifers as the eastern forests. A few, a very few, species grow in both regions, such as the Canadian spruce and box elder. As a whole, the forests of the United States, both eastern and western, are in poor condition. They have suffered so greatly NON-WMSTEO .^^ TROPICAk TIMBER REGIONS OF THE U. S. from lumbering and from forest fires that today they produce a pitifully small fraction of their full capacity. About seventeen per cent, only, remains uncut. Forty-three per cent has been cleared for farm lands. Thirty per cent has been cut, but is again restocking and ten per cent or more than eighty million acres has been so cut and burned that only sparse inferior growth is slowly reclaiming the land. FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES 65 The forests of east and west have been further subdivided into five regions — three in the east and two in the west. Eastern Forests Western Forests Northeast Rocky Mountain Central Pacific Coast South The Northeastern Forest: This region once held the most important forests in the United States and for many years more timber was cut from it than from all the rest of the country. Today as a timber pro- ducing region, it is negligible — it is like a mine that has been worked out. The original forest contained more softwoods than hard- woods, the most important species being white pine and red spruce. These two valuable species have been cut until very little remains. On the more fertile and moister sites the hard- woods— beech, birch and maple predominate. As a result of lumbering much of the original pine has been replaced by pure second growth stands of poplar, birch and aspen. It is this region that within the next decade will probably see a great deal of intensive forestry to bring back by means of man-made plantations the valuable tree species that once grew there. Central Forest: Unlike the region of the northeast this central forest is a forest of hardwoods. It contains some very valuable species. The oaks are the most abundant and 'the most valuable, but, in addition to these are hickory, yellow poplar, ash, elm, and 66 FORESTS AND MANKIND several hundred other species. This central forest contains more different kinds of trees than any other in North America. A few pines grow here, sometimes in pure stands, but usually mixed in among the hardwoods. Shortleaf pine is the most important conifer in this forest. Several pitch pines also occur and red cedar, but the great distinguishing fea- ture of this central region lies in its being a forest of hard- woods, for all the other forest areas are regions either of pure softwoods, or of softwoods with a scattering mixture of hardwoods. Of this region, not more than five per cent of the original forest now exists. A great deal has been cleared for farm land, for it contains some of the most fertile and well-watered soil in the United States. The forests that still remain have been cut over so often for the best timber that only the poorer material remains. Southern Forest: This is a forest of yellow pine. By far the most important are longleaf pine, loblolly pine, and shortleaf pine forming pure stands over wide areas. These three pines have made the south- ern states one of the greatest timber producing regions of the world. They not only provide valuable timber, but, from their resin are extracted turpentine and rosin. Hardwoods occur among the pine, but they are of secondary importance. Where lands are flooded part of the year cypress and tupelo grow — both valuable trees. The forests of this re- gion have suffered heavily both from lumbering and fire and today in twenty-five per cent of this area, natural regeneration of valuable trees is prevented by frequent forest fires and the FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES 67 absence of proper forest management. Here the practice of forestry should bring rich rewards, for in no portion of the United States is tree growth so rapid. Rocfy Mountain Forest: In this forest the most important tree, by far, is western yel- low pine. Growing largely in open, scattered stands it extends over almost all this region except the Central Rockies. Mixed in with the pine, and over small areas growing in pure stands are Douglas fir, white fir, lodgepole pine, engelman spruce and western larch. In this region the forests occur very unevenly, largely because of the great difference in land elevations. The forest is not unbroken as in the east, but occurs at the higher elevation like islands of trees surrounded at their base by broad valleys of dry, treeless lowlands and topped above by bare mountain tops too high for tree growth. This region has not suffered greatly from logging, but destructive fires have laid waste large areas. More than half of this forest still bears vir- gin timber. Pacific Coast Forest: The largest timber in all North America and perhaps in the world is found in the forests of the Pacific Coast. This forest is composed principally of softwoods with a few scattered hard- woods of no great importance. In all this region Douglas fir is the most important timber tree and is only surpassed in size by the redwood. Here, too, large quantities of yellow pine exist, together with some western hemlock and several species of fir. Redwood grows there and on the coast of northern California is an exceedingly important timber tree. 68 FORESTS AND MANKIND Today this region is the outstanding lumber-producing re- gion in the United States. It contains the last great stand of timber yet untouched by the axe. When the forests of this region are exhausted, there will be no other region in the United States to which we may turn for great virgin areas of wood. When that day comes, the only areas of virgin timber toward which we may look, will be Canada, the Tropics and Alaska. But the forests of Canada are slow growing and over wide areas they are of inferior quality and small size. The forests of the Tropics are still an unsolved enigma. The forests of Alaska contain storehouses of timber some of which are yet unexplored. As a whole, Alaska is not a tim- ber country for the interior is covered with only a sparse stand of stunted inferior species. Along the larger streams, birch and spruce attain fair size, but as we leave the streams we find the trees become both smaller and scarcer. The interior forests are suffering greatly from fire for the coming of the white man has been attended by this enemy of the forest and practically no efforts are being made to provide fire protection. In the coast forests of Alaska valuable timber grows, chiefly Sitka spruce, western hemlock, red and yellow cedar. Douglas fir, although abundant further south, is absent. The individual trees are smaller than in the Pacific Coast forest, but much larger than the trees of the eastern forest. This narrow coast belt of heavy timber extends for a thousand miles along the Pacific. At some future time, when the eastern spruce now used for paper has become exhausted, this hemlock and Sitka spruce of Alaska will probably be called on to take its place. And when that time comes, Alaska's forests will assume a new im- FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES 69 portance, for foresters believe that enough spruce grows there to supply perpetually one-third of the raw material needed for paper making in the United States. Already private interests are buying timber for paper pulp from the two Alaskan Na- tional Forests. So our forest history has been one of lavish use, and rapidly diminishing resources. Beginning with a country plentifully supplied with timber we have destroyed this forest heritage with fire and axe until only about one-fourth remains. Each day this remnant diminishes. To fulfill the needs of a rapidly growing nation we have cut out region after region and now we are beginning on the last region of all — the Pacific North- west. Worst of all we have treated our forests like a mine that once exhausted has finished forever its service to mankind — a needlessly wasteful thing to do. And we have done this in the face of what the nations of Europe have learned. For with a little care and a little vision, the forests of the United States could be made to produce far more than they produce now — far more, in fact, than they have ever produced. And they can be kept productive forever. That is the heart of America's for- est problem. To build up and restore the productive capacity of her forest lands. CHAPTER 7 WHAT FORESTRY IS CHAPTER 7 WHAT FORESTRY IS Practical forestry means both the use and the preservation of the forest. — GIFFORD PINCHOT. THAT natural resources are inexhaustible must have been one of the oldest beliefs of man. It is certainly one of the most mistaken. A few — a very few — of life's gifts come to us without labor, and serve us without diminishing, like sunlight and air. Other of life's gifts were for a long time ours for the mere labor of acquiring as the grass that man's early herds con- sumed and the wood he used for his shelter and fires. So abun- dant were these natural resources men fixed no value upon them. They were nobody's property and they were everybody's property. Naturally, so long as trees were plentiful, men gave no thought toward perpetuating them. The earlier peoples had looked on the woods as a free, perpetual gift of nature, like the soil itself. Until very recent times the forests seemed so numerous and covered such wide areas, men thought and spoke of them as inexhaustible. Man used wood lavishly and destroyed great forested areas with axe and fire and no one thought about it. There would always be more. Trees were so numerous — often for the farmer and settler they were too numerous. 73 74 FORESTS AND MANKIND But gradually as populations increased, the forests, through cutting and fire were pushed farther, back and wood, especially in the centers of civilization, grew scarce. So trees began to take on value and forest ownership came into existence. Na- tions and states set aside large areas within which timber cut- ting was unlawful — man was beginning to think of fostering tree growth and protecting trees from destruction. This early effort, really more of a puzzled groping than actual effort, was the world's first foreshadowings of forestry. Time passed and the more thickly settled nations began to find that protection alone was not enough. It was very neces- sary to protect, but to insure a future wood supply it was also necessary to learn how to grow trees on lands already cut over. Nature unaided proved an uncertain ally. Men found that sometimes nature herself replaced the forests they had taken away — and sometimes not. They saw, too, that in place of the valuable forests they had cut, nature often brought in trees for which man had little use. It all seemed a very complex, very perplexing problem, and men became eager to learn how woodlands should be treated that they might produce continuous and still greater quan- tities of wood. Already necessity existed to improve on nature's husbandry because more timber was becoming needed each year. Yet each year less forest soil remained to produce it since cities and farms now occupied much land that had once been forested. Through this science of the forests — through forestry — men hoped to learn some means of helping nature produce on one acre what formerly she had produced on two or three. He hoped also to replace the less valuable species with woods of greater usefulness. WHAT FORESTRY IS 75 So, in addition to this fundamental idea of forest protection from fire and waste, there came into being a science of forest culture that has been given the name of forestry. And the purpose of forestry, reduced to its fundamental terms, is to help nature produce perpetually, on a given area, the greatest quantities of the most valuable forest products. It has to do, not so much with the individual tree, as with that complex community of trees we call the forest. NURSE TREES Aspen, birch, poplar and other trees with open foliage often protect seedlings of other more valuable species from wind and drought. Foresters look on a forest as the farmer looks on a field of wheat. Both are crops of the soil and both produce harvests of varying usefulness to man. In deciding between barley, wheat, rye, or any other agricultural crop, the farmer selects what he will grow, both on the basis of what his lands will best pro- duce and what crop will prove most profitable. In the same 76 FORESTS AND MANKIND way, although within narrower limits, the forester decides what he will grow. It may be best to grow oak for ties, cedar for fence posts, pine for box boards, or hickory and ash for tools and vehicles. Usually he chooses his species from among the trees that naturally grow there. And if he finds it necessary to plant, the forester will usually select a tree that nature has already proved will grow successfully in that region. A forester will not try to grow redwood plantations in New England, or Southern pine in Michigan. Each tree species is best adapted to certain localities and when taken out of their natural habitat often grow very slowly or die before reaching maturity. The idea of managing a forest as a farmer manages a farm is of relatively modern origin and in a sense forestry is a young science. The care of trees however dates back into history's misty beginnings. China had a Department of Mountain For- ests nearly two thousand years ago. The ancient Greeks wrote long treatises on the care of woodlands. Each country had its legends and its more or less rules of thumb regarding for- est lore. Yet all nations approach forestry with reluctance and only when impelled by necessity. They are driven to forestry by different paths. Some countries are forced to forestry by lack of water supply, others to save their hillsides from being gul- lied and beaten by the rains. Still other countries seek forests to protect them from floods and drought, others to provide their peoples with lumber and fuel. France took up forestry only when the destruction of most of her forests was followed by heavy floods and the washing away of her hillsides. Need for wood first caused the Germans to think of forestry for there, where winters are long and Photographed by IV. /. Htttchinson FOREST FIRE LOOKOUT WHAT FORESTRY IS 77 severe, fuel wood is almost as much a necessity as food itself. Not so many hundreds of years ago each nation had to de- pend largely on its own timber to satisfy the ordinary needs of its population. Today, modern transportation permits timber to be marketed at great distances from its source. Wood has developed long legs. China obtains large amounts of timber from North America and South Africa gets much of hers from northern Europe. But in the long run it is the best economy for a nation to grow timber on its own soil and to put to use those rough, less fertile sections where for one rea- son or another agriculture is either impossible or unprofitable. That in part is what the practice of forestry is doing. It is making these poorer lands profitable by growing trees. And even aside from man's need for wood and from the part that forestry plays in solving the problem of land use it seems inevitable that all civilized countries must come at last to manage their forest land rationally and systematically. For history has taught, in lessons of varied severity, that few coun- tries can afford to reduce their forests much below one-third their total land area. Nations that have done this usually suffer from extremes of climate, from drought and from alternate periods of abnormally high and low water. A nation that cuts her forests without a thought to future crops of wood is treating her woodlands as a mine — as a source of wealth capable of supplying only so much material and after that to be abandoned as if it were played out and useless. But it is an economic crime to treat forests so. For if forests are cut properly and protected properly they need never play out. On the contrary they will usually increase both in value and 78 FORESTS AND MANKIND volume and supply timber, fuel and other products for all time. That is the highest ideal of forestry — to make timber lands permanently productive. To bring a forest up to its stage of greatest usefulness to man and always keep it there. In forestry, perhaps, more than in any other field of human activity it is true that history repeats itself. Almost invariably civilized countries repeat the same steps and make the same blunders in regard to their timber lands. First, a time exists when the forests are everywhere and possess no value. No one owns them. No one cares to own them. Settlers cut and burn to get them out of the way, so that they can plant crops, or pro- duce grass for their herds. It is an era of unrestricted forest devastation. Later, as the forests become scarce and wood is hard to obtain, laws are passed seeking to protect the forest from fire and from unrestricted cutting. Last of all when pro- tection alone is found to be not enough, measures are taken to plant the lands made barren and to cut more carefully the forests that remain. Not all nations reach these stages at the same time. In some corner of the world today, each act in this drama of forest exhaustion is being played. In parts of the tropics men are still in the first stage where the forests are almost limitless and without value. France, Sweden and Germany have reached the third stage and are practicing scientific for- estry. It is upon this final stage that the United States is slowly entering. It is natural that governments rather than individuals should have taken the lead in forestry, since timber crops are long- time crops and require years rather than days to mature. >. Si