From the collection of the

7 n
m

o Prejinger
v oJibrary
t P

San Francisco, California
2006

THE STORY OF THE FOREST

" I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills."

THE

STORY OF THE FOREST

BY

GORDON DORRANCE, F. E.

State Forest Commission
Pennsylvania

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO

COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY JOHN GORDON DOKRANCE

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

DCRKANCE, STORY OF FOREST

E. P. 14

TO MY TWO MOTHERS

NATURE, WHO INSPIRED ITS UNDERTAKING, AND

E. T. D., WHO INSPIRED ITS COMPLETION,

THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY

DEDICATED

Preface

FROM earliest childhood the forest is a place of
interest. It is first known as the mysterious haunt
of some good fairy or wicked elf. Then it becomes
a playground for youth: the scene of many
vigorous rompings by the boys and of not a few
of the quieter pastimes of the girls. Later it
furnishes the shaded resort for picnics and excur-
sions. It is a place preferred above all others by
the devotees of gun and rod. To students of Na-
ture and others of a thoughtful turn of mind, it is
the sequestered retreat wherein is the atmosphere
of inspiration to lofty purposes and high ideals.

The charm of the forest is not confined to any
particular rank or body of people. The magnifi-
cence and splendor of its natural growth, the
peace and quiet of its dusky recesses, the sights
and sounds of its wild life — all have their irre-
sistible appeal, not only to the keen student and
ardent frequenter, but to the casual observer
and chance visitor as well.

Even the most thickly populated and built-

8 Preface

up centers of civilization have a forest or wood,
somewhere near at hand, which is ever offering
opportunities for study and observation. Its
lesson is perennial; its book lies always open.

With the design of telling the younger gener-
ation what the woodlands of this country are,
and what they mean, this book has been pre-
pared, chiefly for use in the schools. Much of
what it contains is new and out of the beaten
track of textbooks, but it is nevertheless impor-
tant, especially at this time, when more attention
is being concentrated upon subjects of practical
importance. These earlier lessons being learned,
pupils will be in a position to take an advanced
step in nature study and in that other subject,
very closely allied to it, American forestry.

It is desired here to express appreciation to
Mr. J. M. Daiger for criticisms of the book, and
to Mr. D. D. Bronson, Dr. F. W. Besley, Mr.
K. E. Pfeiffer and the United States Forest Ser-
vice for courtesies and assistance which were of
value in securing many of the illustrations.

Contents

The Forests of America

The Forests in Early Days 13

The Log Cabin 16

The First Sawmills 23

The Economic Value of Forests 29

The Forest To-Day 34

The Tree and How it Lives

The Tree 41

How the Tree Grows 45

How Nature Plants the Tree 50

The Tree and the Forest 56

The Tree's Life — In Youth 59

The Tree's Life — In Old Age 64

The Tree and How it Dies

Why the Tree Dies 71

Storms and Winds in the Forest 73

The Diseases of Trees 75

Forest Insects 79

Forest Fires 82

Floods and the Forest 89

How to Know the Trees

Some Things the Trees Give 97

Arbor Day 100

The Beauty of Trees 103

The White Pine 108

The Red Spruce 112

9

10 Contents

The Hemlock 115

The Balsam Fir , . . 118

The Red Cedar 121

The Beech 124

The Chestnut 128

The Shagbark Hickory 131

The White Oak 135

The American Elm 139

The Canoe Birch 142

The Tulip Tree 146

The Sugar Maple ...... c .... 150

Work in the Woods

With the Woodsmen 157

The Backwoods Dining Room 160

Felling the Trees 163

Hauling the Logs 166

The Log Drive 169

Western Woods 173

The Mill 176

By-Products of the Forest

Paper Made from Wood 181

The Charcoal Burners 187

Leather Tanned with Bark 193

The Turpentine Orchard 197

Spruce Gum 203

The History of Maple Sugar 206

Trees in American History

Perm's Treaty Tree . . . . . . . . . . 217

The Charter Oak . . . . ."..;-.'. . . . 219

The Boston Liberty Tree . . * . . .' . . .223

The Washington Elm 227

The Sequoias of California 229

THE FORESTS OF AMERICA

The Forests in Early Days

GREAT forests once covered most of North
America. In Canada they stretched unbroken
from coast to coast. In our own country they
reached from the Atlantic on the East to the
Middle West. The Middle West itself was, in
great part, a vast plain where forests then, as
now, were almost unknown. The region of the
Rocky Mountains was forest-clad, and the
Pacific Coast was thickly wooded. This prime-
val woodland of ours was the finest in the whole

13

14

The Forests of America

world, covering nearly nine hundred million
acres of land.

The first white settlers in America found forests
everywhere. From these forests they obtained

EARLIEST DWELLERS IX THE GREAT FOREST

the materials for their log houses. From them
they cut the firewood which warmed their rude
homes through the long, cold winters in the new
country. And much else that they needed was
supplied to them by the forests.

The Forests in Early Days 15

People now look upon a forest as a friend, but
to the first settlers it seemed more like a foe. It
must be subdued before they could fully enjoy
their new homes. So they made clearings around
their cabins. And as soon as they could do so, they
turned the woodlands into fields, and the fields,
increasing in number, were soon expanded into
farms. In the clearings, between the dead and
dying trees, they planted Indian corn, pumpkins,
and beans.

At that time there were many wild animals
in the woods — deer and bears, foxes, and wolves.
Squirrels and rabbits were plentiful, too, as were
also wild turkeys, partridges, and quail; and
there were wild pigeons so numerous that when
a great flock took flight it seemed to darken the
sky. Many of these animals and game birds were
easily killed and helped to supply the settlers
with good food.

The Log Cabin

OF course, in those very early times there were
no sawmills nor brickyards in our country. The
first white men had little to work with but their
own strong arms and stout hearts. But these,
with a good broadax, were enough ; and soon the
first log houses sprang up in the woods. The
first American home was a log cabin. The first
habitations of the pioneers in the West, as in the
East, were log cabins. These long ago gave place
to more commodious and pretentious dwellings;
but in the woods and mountains of the South
and of the far West, log cabins may still be seen.

16

The Log Cabin 17

When the settler had chosen the spot for his
new home, he went out in the woods with his ax.
Selecting large, straight trees, he soon brought
them to the ground, trimmed off their limbs, and
cut the tree trunks into logs of convenient length.
With his oxen or horses, he dragged them to the
place where they were needed. There the ends
were hewed flat and notched, and all was made
ready for the "raising."

A house raising was one of the noteworthy
events in the new country. There were few set-
tlers and, therefore, neighbors lived far apart
in those days. But, when a new home was to go
up in the forest, willing hands were never lacking
to help put the walls in place and raise the
rafters. At the raising, two logs, with one side of
each notched, and that side upward, were laid
parallel on the ground. They were as far apart
as the settler wished the width of his house.
Other logs were placed across the ends of these,
so that their notched ends fitted neatly together.
This was done many times, until the house was
as high as its owner desired. Gables were added
at the ends. They, too, were only rough logs,
each cut shorter than the one under it. The gable

STORY OF THE FOREST - 2

18 The Forests of America

logs were made slanting at the ends, and fastened
together with wooden pins. Nails were scarce
and costly, and therefore wooden pins were
driven into auger holes to answer the same pur-
pose. Poles for rafters were finally put in place,

A HOUSE RAISING

running the entire distance from gable to gable,
and the raising was complete. The settler was
left to add the finishing touches to his new home.
Long, hand-split shingles called "shakes" or
square pieces of birch or chestnut bark made the
roof. These were held in place by long and slender
roof poles that were fastened to the rafters by
means of wooden pins.

The Log Cabin 19

There were but few windows in the cabin, very
often not more than one. Greased paper took
the place of glass. The window was closed at
night with a heavy shutter of wood. The door,
swinging on wooden hinges, was thick and strong.
It was fastened with a wooden latch, which was
operated by a latchstring that hung outside
during the day. At night, or when visitors were
unwelcome, the door was made secure against
intrusion simply by pulling in the latchstring.

The logs in the cabin did not fit smoothly to-
gether, and therefore the cracks between them
were filled or "chinked" with moss and clay. In
the fall, earth was piled up against the foundation
logs of the house to keep the wind from blowing
underneath.

There were no cellars under the log cabins.
Some of them had no floor other than the ground
itself, packed hard by the feet of the settler and
his family. Some of the better cabins had a floor
of "puncheons " - logs hewed flat with the same
broadax that had been used in chopping the
logs for the house. Such a floor, rough as we
would think it now, was little short of a luxury
then; it was certainly a comfort.

20 The Forests of America

Of course, furnaces and stoves were unknown.
Light and heat came from a wide, open fireplace
at one end of the cabin. Most of the smoke went

A CABIN HOME

up the large stick-and-clay chimney built on
the outside of the house, though some stayed in
the room below. Cooking was done over the open
fire and upon the broad clay hearth in front of it.
There was usually but one room, and this room

The Log Cabin 21

served as kitchen, living-room and bedroom, all
in one. Here the men sat in hours of leisure,
while their wives and daughters worked over
spinning-wheel and loom. In the evening the
room was lighted by blazing pine knots or strips
of hickory bark fed judiciously to the flames. On
cold nights the fireplace was piled high with logs,
and the warmth and light therefrom made the
rough house a pleasant home to the pioneers.

As for furniture, the settler had little that he
did not make himself, for he could not bring
many chairs and tables with him in the small
wagon or crowded ship in which he had journeyed
from his old home. Sometimes the chairs were
rough, and must have been far from comfortable.
The beds were only platforms or benches along
one side of the cabin, with posts at the edges to
hold them up. They were fastened to the wall,
and unlike those of to-day, could not be moved
from place to place. Hemlock boughs, dried
grass, or corn husks helped to soften this rough
couch, and balsam twigs often made the settler's
pillow.

The log cabins, warm and comfortable as they
were when well made, were really only temporary

22 The Forests of America

quarters. The settlers, even when building them,
were looking forward to better things. Within a
few years, the cabins gave place to what were

JJY THE OPEN FIREPLACE

called "hewed log houses " with clapboards nailed
over the chinks, and with glass windows and
other improvements. Finally, neat and roomy
frame houses, covered with clapboards, took the
place of the log-built dwellings. From these early
days, American homes have steadily grown larger
and better in every way.

The First Sawmills

THE early settlers were our first lumbermen.
With ax and crosscut saw, they made their little
clearings in the forest, getting timber for their
houses and, at the same time, clearing land for
the first crops. Their log cabins having been built
and their corn growing, the pioneers had time
to look about them.

All around them was timber, the finest in the
world, and their first thought was how best to
get rid of it. The wealth of the new country was
mainly in its forests, wherein were found not
only wood for building homes and keeping them

24 The Forests of America

warm, but animals which furnished both food
and clothing.

In the great American forests there were many
fur-bearing animals, such as beavers, otters,
minks, and foxes. The Indians trapped these
wild creatures, trading the furs to the white men.
They did not trade for money in those days, but
for glass beads and other trinkets of which the
Indians were very fond. Trading posts, where
the whites could meet the red men, were built
in various convenient places, usually by the side
of some lake or river.

Around the trading posts small settlements
gradually sprang up. Then lumber was needed
for building houses and boats. The larger tim-
bers were hewed and squared with broadaxes,
but the boards and planks were made by "pit-
sawing." The log, when squared, was placed
over a pit in the ground, or raised several feet
on a trestle, and a line was marked on it with
chalk for the saw to follow. One man stood on top
of the log, pulling the saw up; the other, in the
pit below, pulled it downward. This was "pit-
sawing" or "whipsawing," a very slow and la-
borious method, but the best known then.

The First Sawmills

A WHIPSAW

The first sawmill in our country was prob-
ably built at Jamestown, Virginia, soon after
1607. In 1623 the Dutch West India Company
built three sawmills at New Amsterdam, now
the city of New York. There a large wooden
beam was used in place of the two hand-sawyers.
It was really only another way of pitsawing.
The wooden beam was fastened to a crank on the
mill wheel, and the mill was run by wind or water-
power.

Until after 1800, most sawmills were small
and rudely built, with a single "up-and-down"

26 The Forests of America

saw. Many of these mills were run by water
power and made to do duty as both saw- and
grist-mills. At them the farmer's logs were cut
into boards and his corn was ground to meal. As

A PRIMITIVE SAWMILL

The First Sawmills 27

the pioneers gradually advanced westward, the
sawmill usually followed the first houses in each
little settlement, and sometimes the mills came

INTERIOR OF A SAWMILL WITH BAND SAW

first. Then water power was succeeded by steam
power.

These primitive ways of sawing, which seem
so slow to-day, lasted for many years. After a
time, improvements were made. Circular saws

28 The Forests of America

came into use, and at last the great band saws,
such as are seen in all large mills to-day. A few
hundred feet of lumber was as much as an old-
style mill could cut in a day ; now there are mills
that saw a million feet.

Here again the American pioneer was at work;
for his mills, driven by water power or by wind,
were sawing the timber of this country more than
a hundred years before there were sawmills in
England.

INTERIOR OF A SAWMILL WITH CIRCULAR SAW

The Economic Value of Forests

FROM the earliest days forests have played an
important part in the history of America. To
the first settlers they gave shelter and warmth.
Their homes, their schools, their meeting-houses
were, for the most part, built of the rough timber.
The blockhouses and stockades, to which the
people fled in times of danger, were also made of
logs; and the thick, strong walls of these log forts
Resisted well the attacks of Indians, thereby sav-
ing the lives of many a brave man and his wife
and children.

The Indians were wise in the ways of the woods.

29

30 The Forests of America

So the early hunters and trappers, learning from
them, glided over the rivers and lakes in rude
log dugouts or light birch-bark canoes. In those
days, travel was quicker by water than through
the tangled wildwood; it was safer, too, for there
were enemies in the forest, and a boat left no
trail.

The only roads then were really not roads at
all, but merely "blazed trails," which ran from
one house or village to another. The trail was
marked by chipping pieces of bark from the
trunks of trees which stood in its course. A
blaze, standing out clear and white in the dark
forest, could be seen for some distance. Later
the trails became paths and then well-followed
roads. Plank roads were sometimes made in the
older settlements; and over boggy places and
marshy lands, tree-trunks or logs were often laid
down side by side to form a corduroy road.
Bridges were needed to span deep streams, and
for these much timber was used.

In the building of the first railroads, too, the
forests proved of value. Formerly, all cars were
made of wood, and the engines that drew them
used wood for fuel. For the tracks heavy pieces

The Economic Value of Forests 31

of sawed or hewn timbers were laid on the ties,
and along these a narrow plate or strap of iron
was fastened. This was called a "strap rail." To-
day steel cars and steel rails are used instead of
the wooden ones. Coal takes the place of wood
in firing the massive engines. But these modern
trains travel over rails that are still supported
and held in place by wooden crossties, for
which no satisfactory substitute has been dis-
covered.

From the forests came the wood that built all
of the houses in the first towns and cities. Even
to-day houses are built in whole or in part of
wood. Lumbering, wood- working, pulp-paper
making, tanning, and countless other industries
are still dependent upon the forest, which gives
work to thousands of men and women.

The value and importance of forests, therefore,
was, and still is, very great. Their products are
worth many millions of dollars a year. But the
forests, which once covered such a large part of
our continent, have steadily grown smaller and
smaller. When there was a superabundance of
woodland little thought was given to its preser-
vation. The forests stood in the path of civiliza-

The Economic Value of Forests 33

tion, and much of the timber had to be destroyed.
A great deal was wantonly wasted.

To-day, we recognize the value of trees and
strive hard to save and care for the forests which
remain, in order that they may aid and prosper
the people of the future.

The value of the forests in the development
of the manhood of our country cannot be over-
estimated. Had the early settlers found a land
prepared for the plow, houses and cities ready
built and waiting to be occupied, the American
people would never have acquired the hardiness
and strength of character which have made
America so great a nation.

"He who plants a tree, plants a hope," says an
American poet.1 And an English essayist2 adds,
"A man does not plant a tree for himself, he
plants for posterity. And, sitting idly in the sun,
I think at times of the unborn people who will, to
some extent, be indebted to me. Remember me
kindly, ye future men and women."

1 Lucy Larcom. * Alexander Smith.

STORY OF THE FOREST -3

The Forest To-day

A LARGE portion of America is still wooded.
In the East there are timberlands and small
"woodlots" wherever one may go. In the West
there is even more woodland, with finer forests,
for the West is the home of great trees. Al-
though only a little more than one quarter of
our country is now covered with forests, the
United States has still more woodland than any
other country in the world, save Russia. After
Russia and the United States, Canada is next
in extent of wooded territory.

There are now in this country an Atlantic
forest, a Pacific forest, and a Rocky Mountain
forest. In the Middle West is a great belt of
country where few trees grow. That a consider-
able part of the great mid-western plains was
once wooded there can be but little doubt; but
the fires of many seasons, some the result of
accident, others to furnish better grazing lands
for herds of bison, finally killed this growth.
The heavy sods of grass, together with the dry

34

IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

36 The Forests of America

climate, have made other regions forestless, al-
though along most water courses there is still a
scattered growth of trees.

Trees are in many ways like people. There are
some that cannot live in the cold Northern cli-
mate, others that cannot thrive in the South.
Some need one kind of soil and plant foods, some
another. Many trees must have a great deal of
water, while others seem to do better where there
is not much rainfall. There are trees that live
in high places, the hills and mountains, and
trees that seem to like the sheltered valleys best.
Some need a great deal of sunlight, others but
very little.

In both the East and the West you will find
many kinds of trees growing near together —
trees that need the same kind of soil and climate
in order to live. In the Atlantic forests of the
East are found balsam, cedar, hemlock, larch,
spruce, and white pine. The elm and maple grow
there, too, and beech and birch. Farther south
are the oaks and hickories, basswood, chestnut,
tulip, and black walnut. Along the Gulf of Mex-
ico are many kinds of pines ; and in Florida are
mahogany and royal palms.

ROYAL PALMS IN FLORIDA

88 The Forests of America

In the Rocky Mountains are fir, blue spruce,
and yellow pine. In the Pacific Coast region
grow western hemlock, Douglas fir, sugar pine,
and the famous big trees of California. Some of
these trees are several hundred feet tall, larger
by far than any to be found in the East.

THE TREE AND HOW IT LIVES

THIS TREE HAS LIVED THOUSANDS OF YEARS

The Tree

A TREE is a woody plant, with a single stem
coming up from the ground. It is of longer life
and greater size than any other kind of plant.
Some plants live a few months; others, perhaps,

41

The Tree and How it Lives

a few years; but the tree is a plant that lives on
and on, year after year, often for a hundred
years and more.

Every tree has three great parts — the roots,
the trunk, and the top or crown. If it were not for
its roots, the tree would soon
fall. The roots hold the tree
in place, helping it to grow
tall and straight. They do
more than that, for without
them the tree would have
little to eat or drink. Some
of these roots are very long
and strong, reaching far into
the ground to support and
hold up the tree. Deep down
in the earth they go, to find
water and foods for the tree above. On the
ends of these large, strong roots are a great
many little roots or rootlets. These are the
younger parts of the roots, and so fine and small
that sometimes they are called "root hairs."
The root hairs drink a great deal of water. They
also take up some mineral foods which the tree
needs in growing.

ROOTS OF A TREE

The Tree 43

Think of these little roots as being so many
small pumps; and think of the bigger roots, the
trunk, and the branches as pipes leading up to
the crown of the tree. The pumps force the
water and raw plant foods up from the ground
and into a layer of living wood \vhich covers all
parts of the tree and is called the '"cambium."
The foods, in their journey upward, are forced
through this and the younger bark and wood. All
contain many small openings or '"pores" through
which the food and water pass. On and on they
go, sometimes for more than a hundred feet,
until at last the crown is reached. There the
food goes into the branches, buds, and leaves;
and the leaves give off the unused water to the
air.

Now all this time the leaves have been busy
taking in carbonic acid gas from the air. This
they do by breathing. A tree breathes day and
night through its leaves and twigs, and through
small holes in the bark of the trunk; but most
of all through its leaves. The leaves combine the
acid from the air with the water and minerals
from the soil. The raw food which the roots
have sent up is digested in the treetop.

44 The Tree and How it Lives

Without light and heat trees could not live.
For the leaves serve as the stomach of the tree,
and they must have warmth and sunshine to
help them digest the tree's food. After the food
is digested in the leaves, it goes back to the tree
itself, ready to be used. If the tree does not need
this food in its new growth this year, it is stored
up for next year's use all the way down the tree
to its roots. Then, in the spring, it helps to form
new shoots, new leaves, and tiny roots.

Look at a leaf. On it are many little raised
lines which reach out to all parts of the leaf and
back to the stem and twig. These are "veins,"
full of the tree's blood. It is white and looks very
much like water; but the leaf is green, being
colored with "chlorophyll." This green not only
tints the leaves but helps them to digest their
food.

A large portion of the tree's wood seems to be
dead, and remains so from year to year. It has
stopped growing. But the younger parts of the
roots, the root hairs, and the buds and leaves
above are all alive. They are the living parts of
the tree.

How the Tree Grows

As the tree grows older the food which the
roots take up and the leaves digest is helping
it to grow in height and thickness. Trees grow
very little in the winter. It is in the spring that
their growth really begins, and in the summer
that they grow best.

When the food comes back from the leaves
to the body of the tree, it helps the newer, living
wood, the cambium, to add a thin layer of wood
to the trunk of the tree. This is like a new coat

45

46 The Tree and How it Lives

which is slipped over the body of the tree each
year. It covers the tree between the old wood
of last year and the bark, which is pushed out
farther and farther as the tree grows in thickness.

You can tell the age of almost any tree if you
know how to ask. Look at the broad, flat stump
of an old oak just cut down. On the trunk of the
oak its growth for many years is plainly to be
seen. You will see some little rings on the stump.
These rings are narrow and very close to one
another, and they show you where the coat of
new wood was added to the tree each year. The
inside of the ring, since it is grown earlier in the
season, is called the "spring wood," the other
grows over it later on, and is known as the "sum-
mer wood." Both are formed by the cambium,
the living wood. It is only a narrow layer of a
few cells; but this layer grows and, as it grows,
divides. It makes the new wood each year — the
annual ring. Inside, next to the cambium, is a
layer of sapwood several years old. A little
farther in is the heart wood, which is no longer
alive. But the younger wood helps the cambium
to carry the tree's food.

In the rings covering the stump the life his-

How the Tree Grows

47

tory of the tree is shown. On one side may be
seen a large, dark scar. Years ago -- the stump
itself tells just how many — a fire swept through
the forest. It did not kill the old oak, a young
tree then, but it left the burned place which you*
see now. Some of
the rings are very
close together. In
those years there
was little rain; the
tree grew slowly
and but very little.
Some of the rings
are far apart, show-
ing how well the
tree could grow with
plenty of water. Perhaps there are other scars,
of other fires, to be seen; perhaps also a scar
where years ago the tree was struck by lightning.
Now as it grows in thickness, the tree at the
same time is busy growing in height. In the first
year of a tree's life its little twigs grow by a sort
of stretching out, as if they were reaching up-
ward for light and air. After the first year, these
new shoots stop growing longer, and grow thicker.

SECTION OF A TRKE SHOWING RINGS

48 The Tree and How it Lives

And while they are becoming thicker by adding
a new coat of wood, they are sending out from
the little end-buds more new shoots to take their
places. From the buds, every spring, come the

YOUNG PINES

young shoots which lengthen the twig and form
the leaves and flowers.

If you look closely at the picture you will see
on one of the young pines a small ax and a lunch-
bag. At the top of this tree is a single short,
straight branch. It is called the " terminal shoot,"

How the Tree Grows 49

because it grows at the end of the tree's stem.
While the other shoots at the side are helping
the tree to grow one way, this one is helping it
to grow tall. If this shoot, or its bud on the end,
is frozen, or dried up or broken off, another near
it takes its place, and the tree grows steadily
taller.

While the age of a tree is shown by rings in the
wood, there is an even easier way to tell the age
of pines like these. It is not necessary to cut them
down. A glance at their branches will tell you just
how old they are. Each year new shoots have
come out around the tree in a circle or "whorl"
of branches. There are twenty of these whorls
on the young tree at which we have just been
looking, so we may know that it is just twenty
years old. Perhaps a little more, for the side
, shoots of the first few years may have been lost
as the tree grew upward. Now it is at least
twenty feet tall.

Year by year the tree's crown is being built
up, as buds grow into shoots with their leaves
and flowers, the shoots into twigs, and the twigs
into branches.

STORY OF THE FOREST - 4

TREE SEEDS OF MANY KINDS

How Nature Plants the Tree

THERE are "mother" and "father" trees in
the forest. The mother trees are called "seed-
trees," and from them come the seeds that will
some day grow into large trees too. The seeds
grow with the buds and leaves in the top of the
tree. Some trees have seeds on them every
year, while on others there are seeds only once in
every three or four years. In late summer and
early fall the seeds ripen, and Nature makes
ready for the planting.

The seeds from all the different forest trees are

50

How Nature Plants the Tree 51

of many sizes and shapes. When they are ready
to leave the tree they all in some way reach the
ground below, and in some way each tiny seed
seeks to find itself a place to grow. How they
leave the mother tree and reach their new home
is an interesting story.

There are some seeds so light that when they
are ripe it is very easy for the wind to pick them
up and help them on their way, sometimes carry-
ing them for many miles. Look at the seed of a
sugar maple, and you will see that it is very light,
though large. There is a little body or nut in the
center, and on each side a small wing, as if it
were really meant to fly. The ash and birch
among the hardwoods, and the evergreen trees,
spruce and pine, have small winged seeds that
travel lightly on the wind. With the basswood,
a part of the leaf falls with the seeds, and,
like a kite, carries them far from the parent
tree.

Toss up in the air a seed with wings. It circles
around, falling slowly to the ground. If there
is any wind the seed will finally come down far
from where you threw it up. Now tear the wings
from the same seed, and throw it up once more.

52 The Tree and How it Lives

It falls rapidly this time, and the wind has little
effect on it.

So wings have been given to these seeds.
With them they are blown about far and wide
through the forest, and where there are no trees.
If all had fallen to the ground and remained
under the old tree, there would not have been
room for so many of them, and few of the seeds
would ever have grown into trees.

Some seeds are large and heavy, far too heavy
for the wind to carry. The wind could never
carry the acorns, the hickory nuts, the chestnuts,
or black walnuts very far. So Nature, always
wise, has found another way.

The squirrels and little chipmunks live on
nuts and acorns. In the fall they pick them up,
hiding away many of them to feed on through
the long winter. Sometimes these little animals
carry off so many nuts that they forget where
all of them are hidden; or perhaps they have
more than they can eat. In the spring, there-
fore, many of the nuts which the squirrels have
forgotten sprout and grow. It is said that three
out of every five nut trees have been planted
by the squirrels. Birds, too, are carriers of seeds;

How Nature Plants the Tree

53

flying over forest and plain they scatter the seeds
of many trees and plants on which they feed.

Some fruits and seeds float easily on the wa-
ter. Falling from the tree above, they ride off
on some forest stream, until they are pushed
ashore by the current to find a resting place.

Seeds with little prickly coats stick to the furry
backs of wild animals, and perhaps are carried
like this a long distance before they fall to the
ground and begin to grow.

CONE OF A SUGAR PINE

54 The Tree and How it Lives

The evergreens keep their seeds in cones until
they are ripe. Then the cones open to let out the
tiny seeds inside. Most cones are only a few
inches in length, but those of some Western trees
are much larger. The sugar pine, a tree growing
on the Pacific Coast, has cones which are from
one to nearly two feet long. When the warmth
of a hot California sun has caused these great
cones to open, the hundreds of seeds inside drop
out. They are all ready then to be planted and
to grow; and from such small seeds as these,
giant trees come up in time.

In some South American countries there are
trees with seeds so heavy that when the tree
lets them fall they go almost out of sight in the
soft forest soil. Some trees have fruits that burst
or explode, shooting out the seeds inside; others,
like the coconut, float lightly on the water.

Young oaks and chestnuts often spring from
the seeds of the older trees. But some of them
come up in yet another way. When the old trees
are cut down their stumps, still full of life, send
out new shoots the following spring. These
grow more rapidly than seedlings, yet seldom live
as long as the trees which have sprung from seed.

How Nature Plants the Tree 55

WILLOWS

Willows nearly always grow along the bank of
some stream or lake. The swift current and the
waves sometimes snap off their branches. When
these branches are afterwards washed ashore,
they soon take root and grow.

So Nature plants her trees. The old trees die,
but always Nature is sending up younger ones to
fill their places in the forest.

The Tree and the Forest

MANY trees growing together make a forest.
Trees in a forest are very much like pupils in a
school. Some of the trees have grown very
fast; they are very tall. Others have grown
more slowly, and are short.

The trees have branches for arms, and trunks
for bodies. They are breathing all the time,
and like us, they must eat and drink to live.
Some need a cold place in which to live. Others
could not grow there at all. The palm of Florida

56

The Tree and the Forest 57

would not live long in Canada, and the spruces
and firs of the North are rarely found in the
South.

A FLORIDA FOREST

Sometimes two or three varieties of trees al-
ways seem to be near each other in the forest.
Such trees are sure to be very much alike in
many ways. They need the same plant foods,

58 The Tree and How it Lives

the same light and heat. The balsam and the
spruce, the chestnut and the oak, are trees that
often grow together in the woods.

There are many kinds of forest in this great
land of ours — from the pine woods of New
England to the Florida forests, where grow the
royal palms. In some forests there are only a
few kinds of trees; in others there may be a hun-
dred kinds.

Some of the trees we see in these forests have
been growing for many years. They are very old,
forest grandfathers, in fact. Under them, at
their feet, many little trees are springing up. All
of these younger trees are trying to reach the
light, and in time they will take the places of the
older ones.

The forest is a great plant society. Trees are
its members, and they are of every age, and many
kinds and sizes. They protect one another, and
also give food and shelter to the wild birds and
animals that seek a home in the quiet recesses.

SEEDLINGS

The Tree's Life— In Youth

LET us imagine a great many little tree seeds
lying together on the ground. It is spring, and
the seeds are just beginning to sprout. The frosts
of winter did not kill them, for over them was
a thick blanket of soft snow. A downward and
upward growth is beginning. One little shoot,
looking for light and air, pushes itself up from
the ground. At the same time the first tiny root-

60 The Tree and How it Lives

let is pushing its way deep down into Mother
Earth in search of water and earthy foods.

Suddenly, in place of the seeds, we have a lot
of little trees, growing larger day by day. Each
tree lives its life mfive ages. They have reached
the first age, for now they are "seedlings," little
trees not yet three feet tall. The seedlings may
be only a year or two old, yet on them, young
as they are, the three parts of every tree are
very plainly shown. There are the first small
branches with their pine needles, the body of the
tree, and the roots with their fine root hairs.

At first the seedlings grow slowrly, but in a few
years they are more than three feet in height.
Some of them have become taller than a man
and are three or four inches thick. The seedlings
are "saplings" now, and at the second age of
the tree's life.

Beneath the saplings stands a young man.
He is a forester, a man who takes care of trees,
planting young ones, and cutting down the old
when they have stopped growing. He aids Na-
ture in one of her greatest works, the care of the
forest.

The seedlings needed a great deal of shade.

The Tree's Life — In Youth

61

Too hot sunlight would have dried them up and
killed them. They had plenty of protection
growing under the old trees, but now they are
were then. They want more

larger than the\

SAPLINGS

light and heat, more food and more room. The
seedlings had all the growing space they needed,
but the leaves and branches of the saplings are
crowding against one another. Their tops are
fighting, and in the ground the roots are work-
ing against each other.

62 The Tree and How it Lives

In the forest, as in life, only the strongest
live. When the winds blow through the woods,

POLES

the trees beat against each other. They are so
close together that many of the branches and
smaller, weaker trees are broken down. Without
branches and leaves a tree cannot live, for it is

The Tree's Life — In Youth (tt

then unable to breathe and get sufficient air.
And so the larger, stronger saplings grow rapidly
and become taller every year; but the growth
of the over-topped trees becomes slower and
slower. Finally they stop growing altogether,
and before very long they die and are blown over
by the wind.

Most of the trees that are left are now from
four inches to a foot thick at the height of a man's
chest. This is four and a half feet above the
ground, and the height at which the forester
measures trees. They have reached the third,
or "pole," age.

The Tree's Life -In Old Age

THE shade in the forest has now become great.
The floor is covered with leaves and needles, and
the tops of the trees are very close together.
Beneath, it is almost dark, so dark that a great
many of the low-growing branches are beginning
to die.

In each tree, as in the entire forest, there is
a constant struggle between the branches and
twigs and the numerous tiny buds for food and
light. The crown of the tree pushes upward to
find these things, and soon cuts off the crowded
branches below. The close-growing trees in the
forest prune each other and themselves. The
lower limbs, cut off from the light above, die
as the tree grows taller, and are easily snapped
off by the winds or broken as the trees whip
against each other. When this occurs early in
the tree's life, the small branch stubs that are
left do little harm. They are soon grown over,
and do not form the large, coarse knots found in
trees with many limbs. Thus the forest-grown

64

The Tree's Life — In Old Age 65

tree makes good lumber, but that grown in the
open is often fit only for firewood.

When the pole trees have reached the age of

STANDARDS

fifty or sixty years they are from one to two feet
thick. Then they are called "standards." While
the trees have been growing taller, they have also
been increasing in size — in thickness as well as
in height. As a full-grown man needs more food

STORY OF THE FOREST -5

86 The Tree and How it Lives

than a small boy, so these standards need much
more food than ever before. Their roots go deeper
and deeper into the ground. They must have a
great deal of water. No one knows just how a
tree pumps water upward for a hundred feet and
more. It is one of Nature's secret wonders.

It is hard for the big standards to get enough
air and food. But still they keep on growing,
though now more slowly than before. Soon they
are more than two feet thick, and have reached
the last age of their lives. They are the "vet-
erans" of the stand. Only the very best trees
can live to an old age, and those that are left at
the last have lived through many a hard-fought
battle in the woods.

The veteran trees, some of them seventy-five,
some a hundred years old, bear the most seed.
Every one of them must have a great deal of
well-digested food. In the course of time these
old trees become almost unable to get enough
to keep them alive. The crowns are not large
enough to take care of all the food the trees
need. The trees are so tall that it is very hard to
give the leaves and branches in the top sufficient
water, and at last the veterans stop growing.

The Tree's Life — In Old Age

67

We saw the trees in these woods first as tiny
seeds; then as seedlings and poles; now as large

A VETERAN

trees fit for lumber. They have lived a long,
long time. Some of them finally die through the
laws of Nature; some by the hand of man; and

68 The Tree and How it Lives

there is much of interest in the way they live
and die.

From the tiny seed to the wide-spreading tree
is more than the span of the average human life.
In the beginning the tree is but a small, weak
seedling, barely strong enough to stand alone.
The larger trees protect it from the hot rays of
the summer sun and from the colder storms and
winds of winter. Sheltered by the older trees,
the seedlings too, in time, grow tall and straight,
and become able to take their places in the forest
where they grow. In turn they help to care for
the younger trees below them, and finally, when
they are no longer needed, they go too. There is
much we may learn from the forest tree.

Live thy life Summer-rich

Young and old, Then; and then

Like yon oak, Autumn-changed,

Bright in spring, Soberer-hued,

Living gold. Gold again.

All his leaves

Fall'n at length,

Look, he stands,

Trunk and bough,

Naked strength.

Tennyson.

THE TREE AND HOW IT DIES

A PREHISTORIC FOREST FROM WHICH COAL CAME

Why the Tree Dies

TREES, when allowed to grow, may live for a
hundred or two hundred years; some, in the
West, like that in the picture on page 40, have
lived as many thousand. Some trees die in their
prime, in middle age. Usually, however, it is
the young, tender trees, or those that have
grown old, that die. They do not die at once
when attacked by enemies in the forest, but
seem to die by inches. It may be many years
before all life in them is gone.

Finally they decay, and perhaps the winds
blow them down. For many years they lie where
they have fallen; moss covers the old tree trunk;

71

72 The Tree and How it Dies

squirrels and chipmunks nest in it, and at last
it falls apart. Other and younger trees spring up
to take its place, and the old veteran is not even
missed in the forest where it once grew.

The forest has many foes. To-day few trees
die of old age, for the trees are not only cut down
and killed, but every year many thousands of
them are destroyed by forest fires. Sometimes
in great storms lightning strikes the trees, often
setting them on fire at the same time. Wind and
snow also break down the trees. Trees have their
diseases, too. These diseases weaken them, and
many of them die.

There are so many trees in the forest that there
is not room for all, and some cannot get the food
they need in order to live and grow. Insects
prey upon and kill them; birds and squirrels
eat many of their seeds. Mice, hedgehogs, and
beavers gnaw off strips of their bark, "girdling"
the trunks. The food supply from the roots is
cut off, and the trees are soon killed. Just as
trees are planted in many ways, so, too, in many
ways they die.

Storms and Winds in the Forest

A GREAT many of the trees are blown over by
the winds that sweep through the forest. Some
are broken off in the middle of their trunks;
others are torn up by the roots. '

Here, in this picture, is a man standing on a
tree. A queer-looking tree it is — crooked, and
bent like a very old man. Once, long ago, this
tree was straight. When it was still very young,
a strong wind rushed through the forest one

73

74 The Tree and How it Dies

night, It blew down a large, heavy tree which
fell on top of the little one near-by, and bent it
over. It was very small then, only a few feet
high, and not nearly strong enough to push the
older one from off it. So the little tree grew around
it instead. Finally the old tree decayed where it
had fallen. The picture shows plainly where the
big tree fell on the smaller one.

In the course of forest storms, very tall trees and
those growing on the high hills are most often
struck by lightning. The same flash may strike
several trees standing together, having a differ-
ent effect on each of them. One may be scorched
and burned, and the trunk split in two or cut
down at the base; perhaps the bark is stripped
from another, and pieces of wood torn off; or,
again, the lightning may fill the tree's bark with
hundreds of small holes, withering part of the
crown, while on the other side the leaves escape
unharmed. These strange pranks kill many a
forest tree, and cause more than a few fires.

The Diseases of Trees

MOST of the diseases of trees are caused by
"fungi." Fungi belong to a large family; even
bread mold is only one of these fungi in another
form. Mushrooms, toadstools, and mildew are
all related to the forest fungi.

Doctors say that most of the diseases of our
bodies are spread by tiny germs in the air we
breathe. Fungi have these minute germs, or
spores, too; so small that you cannot see them.
These spores are really very small seeds.

Long ago, perhaps, a woodpecker in search of

75

76 The Tree and How it Dies

a worm bored a little hole in the tree we see
here. Soon after, the spores of some fungus came
flying along through the air and one of them fell
into this same small hole in the tree's bark.
There it began to grow, and from the seed once
so small came this great white bunch. It is still
growing, slowly but surely. The sound wood is
beginning to decay, and in time this fine large
tree will die.

Diseases usually attack trees where the bark
has been cut or torn from the living wood inside.
Here the small seeds find a place to grow, and
soon cause the wood to rot where it was sound
and healthy before. There are some fungi that
live only on the bark and wood, where they soon
produce cankers and swellings. Some of these
swellings on the bark look so much like small
shelves or seats that they are called " bracket
fungi." But not all of the fungi living on the tree
look like this. One of the mildews is like a fine
white powder on the tree's bark. Then, there are
some fungi that are always found on the tree's
roots, while still others attack only the leaves,
covering them with little spots.

There is one fungous disease which is killing

The Diseases of Trees

77

many chestnut trees. It is the chestnut blight
or bark disease. The spores of this fungus find
a growing-place in wounds or holes in the bark,

BRACKET FUNGI

78 The Tree and How it Dies

soon spreading entirely around the trunk or
limb. On smooth, young limbs they form dead,
sunken patches of bark, patches thickly covered
with orange or reddish-brown spots. This patch
or canker grows rapidly, and may girdle the
branch completely the first summer. If its limbs
are attacked first, the tree may live for some time.
But if the canker has formed on the trunk the
tree soon dies.

A very odd kind of fungus is found in some
northern forests. Leaves where these fungi have
been at work will sometimes swell until they are
very large, and look much like a bushy little
broom — so much so that it is known as the
"witch's broom."

Forest Insects

THERE are many little insects which live and
feed on the leaves and twigs and wood of trees.
Though small, the harm they do is very great,
and numerous trees are killed each year by these
"tree borers" and "wood wasps." They look
like large flies, and usually the holes they make
in the tree-trunk are large enough to be seen.
The insects burrow in the wood and work their
way into the tree, making small rooms in which
to lay their eggs. In a short time the wood is
filled with such holes, and often the tree dies.

Flies and moths lay their eggs on the tree's
leaves. When the tiny eggs have hatched, the
many little caterpillars feed and thrive on the
soft, juicy leaves. The caterpillars of butter-
flies and moths eat the whole leaf, so that the tree
sometimes loses all of its leaves early in the
summer. Then there are beetles that eat only the
tenderest parts of the leaf; the veins and outside
of the leaf are left. "Leaf hoppers" drink the

79

80

The Tree and How it Dies

sap, causing the leaves to curl up in little balls.
Another insect, the "leaf roller," rolls up the leaf
to cover its caterpillars. It sews the edges to-
gether, with fine silk threads, and there, hidden

NEST OF CATERPILLARS

from sight, the caterpillars live on the leaves.
And there are some insects, such as "wire
worms," that eat even the tree's roots.

Thus the insects injure our trees in many ways.
Some trees lose their leaves each year, and,

Forest Insects 81

finally, without them, die. Wood borers kill
others, and when they are cut down the wood
can only be burned, for it is full of thousands
of small holes. The damage done to American!
forests by insects and tree diseases amounts to
fully fifty million dollars every year.

Trees injured by fire are an easy prey for the
insects of the forest. Sometimes the forest fires
come first, sometimes the forest insects; but
forest fires are always followed within a short
time by hordes of insects which feed upon the
dead or dying timber, and soon make its de-
struction complete.

In certain sections of the country only an oc-
casional tree may be injured by these insects.
Whole forests have been killed by them, and it is
said that there are five hundred different insects
which attack the oaks alone, and half as many
others which prey upon the pines.

STORY OF THE FOREST- 6

Forest Fires

THOUSANDS of trees are killed in this country
every year by fires that burn through the forests.
A forest fire lasting but a few hours may kill a
thousand trees that needed a hundred years to
grow.

There are several kinds of forest fires. Some of
them burn for days and days out of sight on the
ground. The forest soil is very rich, full of de-
cayed leaves and the wood of old dead trees. So
such fires frequently burn three or four feet deep
into the earth. Fire fighters must dig trenches to
stop them. Other fires burn the young trees and
low bushes on the forest floor above. The worst
fires of all are those that burn high up in the tree-
tops.

Forest fires start in many ways. Suppose a
hunter or fisherman to be camping out for the
night. Of course, he has a campfire; it burns all
night, and all goes well. Early in the morning the
hunter rises. He piles more wood on his fire,

82

Forest Fires

83

which has burned down during the night, cooks
his breakfast, eats it, and sets out. He is in a
great hurry, and does not bother to see that his
fire is out before he leaves. It would take only

A FIRE WARDEN

84 The Tree and How it Dies

a few minutes of his time, but hunting and fish-
ing are best early in the day, and so he goes off
hastily. Soon after sunrise the wind comes up.
The campfire is still burning as the hunter left
it. The wind strikes the fire and picks up some
of the burning coals; they scatter to right and
left, until there are a dozen fires in place of one.
Some time during the day another hunter, or
probably a fire warden, sees the smoke and gives
the alarm. Men come into the woods with pails
and shovels. They fill the pails with water from
a nearby brook, and throw it on the spreading
fires as quickly as they can. When there is no
water the fire fighters use their shovels, scatter-
ing loose earth over the blaze. They may have to
fight the fire all through that day and night,
perhaps for many days; and before that fire is
finally out it may be necessary to start another
-a "back-fire." Then, where the two meet,
both go out. When the fire is finally extinguished,
only a bare, dreary stretch of land, with not a
single living thing in sight, is left.

Instead of the cool, green woods, there are now
only dead trees and blackened stumps. Deer,
rabbits, and foxes all run together from a fire like

Forest Fires 85

this. The wild animals of the forest flee for their
lives, forgetting each other and thinking only of
escape. Sometimes the fire catches up with them
and, like the trees, they too are killed. It takes
but a few minutes to start such a fire as that;
but it requires a hundred years to bring back the
trees.

In summer, fires are frequently started along
the railroads by sparks from the engines. People
out for a walk in the woods throw down lighted
cigars and cigarettes, or drop lighted matches.
So in many ways the fires are started. The trees
are almost as necessary to our welfare as food.
We could not do without them. Always, there-
fore, we should be very careful when in the
woods and forests.

Many people have been killed in these forest
fires, for there are times when such fires will go
as rapidly as ten miles an hour with the wind,
and no one can run far at such a pace. Once,
years ago, there was a great forest fire in the state
of Michigan. This fire at first was a small one,
and burning in sight of a town. It was only a brush
fire, so no one put it out. But a high wind came
up, the fire scattered and grew larger. Pieces of

Forest Fires 87

burning bark and leaves, whirled upward by the
flames, were caught by the wind and carried all
about. New fires started where they fell, and
soon the forests around the town were all ablaze.
The wooden houses, with their shingled roofs,
offered fresh tinder for the flames. People fled
for their lives. Some were taken out of danger
by railroad trains, but not all were so fortunate.
Those who were left could not get far on foot.
Five hundred men, women, and children were
killed or injured by that one forest fire. Two
thousand people were left without homes.

To obtain the cooperation of the public in
preventing forest fires the United States forest
service has prepared several "DON'TS" which
should be strictly observed by every person
who has occasion to go into a forest, large or
small, for any purpose. Here are a few of these
rules : -

Don't throw your match away until you are
sure it is out.

Don't build a campfire any larger than is ab-
solutely necessary.

Don't build a fire against a tree, a log, or a
stump, or anywhere but on bare soil.

88 The Tree and How it Dies

Don't leave a fire until you are sure it is out;
if necessary smother it with earth or water.

Don't burn brush or refuse in or near the woods
if there is any chance that the fire may spread
beyond your control, or that the wind may carry
sparks where they would start a new fire.

Don't be any more careless with fire in the
woods than you are with fire in your own home.

Don't be idle when you discover a fire in the
woods; if you can't put it out yourself, get help.
Where a forest guard, ranger, or state fire warden
can be reached, call him up on the nearest tele-
phone you can find.

Don't forget that human thoughtlessness and
negligence are the causes of more than half of the
forest fires in this country, and that the smallest
spark may start a conflagration that will result in
loss of life and destruction of timber and young
growth valuable not only for lumber, but for their
influence in helping to prevent flood, erosion, and
drought.

Floods and the Forest

FLOODS, in their way, are equally as destructive
as forest fires. Fields and crops may be flooded,
buildings and homes broken up and carried away,
and even lives lost as the result of a flood. Though
forests may not seem to prevent floods, nor lack
of woodland to cause them, it is often here that
the real reason lies.

Have you ever been in the woods when it was
raining? At first you do not feel the rain, for the

90

The Tree and How it Dies

leaves overhead catch most of the rain drops.
After a while, though, the water begins to trickle
through, and soak out of sight into the ground.
It is absorbed by the leaves and moss in the thick,

A MOUNTAIN STREAM

Floods and the Forest 91

soft forest floor. Some of this water the trees
drink, but most of it goes deep down into the
earth. There it collects, and forms an under-
ground pool or watercourse. This may flow along,
much as a stream on the surface does, for sev-
eral days or weeks before it finally comes out of
some hillside or ravine as a spring of pure, cold
water.

In the mountain springs and streams many of
our great rivers have their sources. When these
highlands are covered with forest growth, the
flow of water is even and steady throughout the
year. Every spring and fall, when there are
heavy rains, the flow is lower, and in times of
little rainfall it is higher, than in regions where
there are no trees. The surface soil is held in
place, and the water is clear and cold the year
round. The snows of winter melt slowly, and the
spring rains fall very softly here. The water
soaks into the forest floor, and Nature stores it
up to feed her lakes and rivers.

But when the woods are burned or cut away,
the soil becomes hard and bare, and when rain
falls, it does not soak in at all. On the hillsides
there are no trees to protect the earth and bind

Floods and the Forest

93

the soil, and therefore the rain runs off as fast
as it falls. It is gone so soon that it does little
good to the hard, stony ground over which it
runs. Most of the rich topsoil is washed away

______

NO TREES TO PROTECT THE EARTH

with it, and the hills are soon filled with deep
gullies, the valleys with loose stones and sand.
Water that would have fed woodland springs
and streams for weeks and months is wasted in
a few hours.

94 The Tree and How it Dies

Floods are frequent in countries where the
forest cover has been removed, and it is often
necessary to replant at great expense mountain
lands once covered with forest by the hand of
Nature. The forest is undoubtedly a powerful
regulator of streams and stream-flow.

HOW TO KNOW THE TREES

THE TREE THAT GIVES TURPENTINE

Some Things the Trees Give

LOOK around you in school. You are sitting
on a wooden seat. The seat rests on a wooden
floor, and perhaps the floor is part of a school-
house built of wood. The doors between the
rooms are wooden, too, and underneath the
plaster walls are lath and heavy studding, all
of wood.

The book in your hand and the pad of paper
on your desk were once parts of a tree in the
forest. Your pencil and your penholder are

STORY OF THE FOREST -7 97

98 How to Know the Trees

both made of wood. When you write with them,
you use a wooden desk, dipping your pen in ink
that was made from wood. The very shoes you
have on were tanned with the bark of some forest
tree. When the rain is falling, and the walks and
streets are wet, remember that the rubbers you
use to keep your feet warm and dry are products
of the forest, too.

At home, the staircases and finishing, the
chairs, the tables, and sometimes the bedsteads
are made of wood; the younger children sleep in
wooden cradles, and play with wooden toys;
even paper for the magazines and newspapers
on the oak reading-table came from the forest.
Music, whether from piano, violin, or phono-
graph, comes from an instrument made wholly
or in part of wood. The use of wood gives sweet-
ness and a mellow tone, and nothing else can take
its place.

Some trees give us sugar, others give us deli-
cious nuts and fruits, still others give us tar and
turpentine, and in South America are trees which
furnish all the India rubber that we use.

Trees keep our homes cool in summer. In win-
ter many of these houses are warmed with wood

Some Things the Trees Give 99

fires, and the fires are lighted with wooden
matches. In many homes wood fires cook what
we eat every day. Even the coal comes from
old, decayed forests which existed ages and ages
ago. The woods help to give us the water we
drink, storing it up, and giving it back to us pure
and fresh. In countless ways the forests are of
benefit and use.

Woodman, spare that tree!

Touch not a single bough !
In youth it sheltered me,

And I'll protect it now.
'Twas my forefather's hand

That placed it near his cot;
There, woodman, let it stand,

Thy ax shall harm it not.

My heart-strings round thee cling,

Close as thy bark, old friend !
Here shall the wild bird sing.

And still thy branches bend.
Old tree ! the storm still brave !

And, woodman, leave the spot;
While I've a hand to save,

Thy ax shall harm it not.

George P. Morris.

A NEBRASKA SCHOOLHOUSE

Arbor Day

EVERY year, in a great many of the states, a
day in spring is set apart for planting useful
trees. This is Arbor Day, and it was first ob-
served by an American school in 1872, in the
state of Nebraska. Here is a Nebraska school-
house. Nebraska was, for a long time, an almost

100

Arbor Day

101

treeless state. But see what the pupils of one
school alone have done. The yard about their
school did not always look like this. It was once
hot and dry in warm weather, and in the winter
the wind blew so cold that the pupils could not
play outdoors.

But now, on each Arbor Day, a tree is planted.
How the trees have changed the appearance of
things! The grounds about the schoolhouse are
beautiful to look at, and afford a splendid place
to play, cooler in summer weather and warmer

ANOTHER NEBRASKA SCHOOLHOUSE

102 How to Know the Trees

in winter. The school itself is more pleasant the
year round and a better place in which to work.

But look now at the picture of that other
Nebraska schoolhouse. There is not a single
tree as far as you can see, and the children that
go to this school have never had an Arbor Day.
Who would have believed that a few trees could
make so much difference?

Beginning in a small way in a state without
forests, Arbor Day is now observed in nearly
every state. American, English, French, and
even Japanese schools now have their Arbor
Days. In this country the governor of each
state names a day in spring when the weather
is good for tree-planting. On that day the pupils
in many schools go out into the school yard with
the teacher. Some one digs a hole, and in this
hole a very small tree is planted, often a young
maple, a birch, or a beech. All through the school
year the pupils water and care for the tree
planted on that day. They watch its growth
from year to year with interest, as the young
branches shoot upward and the trunk grows in
thickness.

The Beauty of Trees

WHO would care to live in a house like this?
There are no green trees to make the house and
the yard cool in summer, none on the bare hills
as far as you can see. In some parts of the world,
even in the Western part of our own country,
there are hundreds of square miles of desert and
waste land far worse than this in the picture. As
far as the eye can reach there is nothing but
piles of drifting sand; nothing to shield the few
travelers from the hot glare of the sun at mid-
day; nothing to protect them from the great

103

104 How to Know the Trees

windstorms that sweep across the plains. The
few springs of water are many miles apart.

On great deserts there are occasional green
places where the traveler may rest and quench
his thirst. These places are called " oases." The
passers-by, tired from a hard day's travel, eagerly
watch for the little clump of trees on the sky-
line where they may obtain rest and refresh-
ment. In such places the few trees are loved and
appreciated.

We, with so many trees, should be thankful
for them. With the changing of the seasons there
is always something new to interest and delight
us in the trees around us. In spring they put on
their new coats which are bright green in color
until the summer's heat gives them a darker hue.
With the frosts of autumn they change again,
and the wooded hillsides are beautiful with their
many -colored leaves. At last the leaves fall, and
then we can better see how the trees themselves
look. Their forms are plainly to be seen, and
each looks different from its neighbor.

Winter over, the coming of the first small
pussy willows warns us again that spring is on
the way. Then it is that we like to get away from

The Beauty of Trees

105

the city, out in the woods and fields. Nature is
never lovelier. The forest is sweet with the fresh
aroma of spring, and a chorus of birds fills the air
with song. Rabbits and squirrels go scampering

A FOREST ROAD

106

How to Know the Trees

off at our approach. In the leaves and moss
covering the forest floor we see the prints made
by many tiny feet, the wild life of the forest. A

GATHERING NUTS

small, cold spring bubbles noisily forth from
beneath some rock or tree; here and there clear
streams of water ripple along over pebbly beds.
Through the long summer the forest is cool
and inviting. When autumn comes the rich

The Beauty of Trees 107

harvest of nuts on hickory and walnut trees
makes the children glad. After a happy day
spent in the woods, they come home with well-
filled baskets in their hands. Going nutting is
one of the truest joys of childhood in the coun-
try. Most of the nuts are ready to be eaten
then, but some, like the chestnut, taste best
when roasted by an open fire of blazing logs.

The tree's early leaf buds were bursting their brown:
"Shall I take them away?" said the frost, sweeping down.
"No, let them alone

Till the blossoms have grown,"
Prayed the tree, while it trembled from rootlet to crown.

The tree bore its blossoms and all the birds sung:
"Shall I take them away?" said the wind, as it swung.
"No, let them alone

Till the berries have grown,"
Said the tree, while its leaflets, quivering, hung.

The tree bore its fruit in the midsummer glow:
Said the girl, "May I gather thy sweet berries now?"
"Yes, all thou canst see:

Take them, all are for thee,"
Said the tree, while it bent down its laden boughs low.

Bjorastjerne Bjiirnson.

The White Pine

THE forest has many secrets worth finding out.
One of them is how to know its trees — not only
in their summer dress, but when the branches
of some are bare, and you have only their forms,
their bark and buds to tell you what they are.

The white pine, the spruce, the hemlock, the
balsam, and the cedar are all evergreens or
"conifers." The branches are clothed in leaves,
and are green the year around. Their seeds are
not like those of the other trees, for they grow in
cones.

108

The White Pine 109

The white pine is one of the finest and most
valuable trees in the forests of America. It is a
giant of a tree, often a hundred and fifty feet
high. The trunk is large and very straight, and
the lowest branches are far above the ground.

The white pine's leaves or needles grow in
clusters of five. They are of a blue-green color,
straight and slender. Each needle is three-
sided, with a small, blunt point at the end, and
may be from a single inch to more than a foot
long.

The tree's fruit is a cone, which ripens in the
summer of the second season, and falls from the
tree during the winter or spring. It is green,
from four to eight inches long, and covered with
loose scales. The pine has very small winged
seeds, which the winds carry far from the mother
tree when the cone finally opens to let them out.

On the young trees the bark is smooth and
green, turning to a dark gray as the tree grows
older; that on the trunks of large trees is broken
up by long, deep furrows.

The pine's wood is light and soft. Much of
it is used as lumber for building our homes, for
the woodwork inside, and in making furniture

WHITE PINES

The White Pine 111

and desks, pianos, and organs. It is even used
for the framework of airships.

Years ago this tree was very common in the
northeastern part of our country. Great stumps
more than six feet thick are still to be seen; here
and there a few of the old, original trees are still
standing. Tall and straight, they tower far above
the younger ones about them, reminding us of
the days when trees of that size were not so
rare. The settlers were quick to see the value
of the white pine, and in each settlement these
great trees were the first to go.

The Red Spruce

THE spruce grows best in the cold climate
of Northern woods, where it lives in low, wet
places along the banks of streams and lakes.
It is smaller than the pine,
usually not more than sev-
enty or eighty feet high. Its
leaves are not as sweet-
smelling as the pine needles.
They are four-sided, dark
green in color, and quite
short, seldom more than a
half-inch long. The leaves
are scattered around the
twig, each one growing by
itself.

The cones are an inch or two long, and look
very much like small, red bananas. They ripen
late in the autumn, and soon afterward fall from
the trees, letting the seeds inside escape. Like
those of the pine, they are winged and very

112

RED SPRUCE
STORY OF THE FOREST -8

114 How to Know the Trees

small. The twigs and the bark on the trunk are
dark brown. The wood is white and very soft.
It is filled with a resinous sap which oozes out
through cracks in the bark, and hardens into
gum.

The roots of the spruce furnished the only
thread and rope that the Northern Indians knew
before the coming of the white man. The Indian
brave used this "wattap," as he called it, to
lace the bark sides of his canoe and wigwam, and
sometimes it was woven into dishes and baskets.
The early settlers in some places found the
spruce useful for the walls and flooring of their
houses. Recently and for many years, almost
all the paper used for newspapers has been made
of wood pulp manufactured from spruce trees.

The Hemlock

ON well-drained slopes and on the edges of
valleys and ravines the hemlock grows. It is
a large tree, from two
to four feet in diameter,
and often seventy-five
feet in height. The
crown is somewhat open
at the base, its slender
branches tapering slowly
upward. Like the spruce,
it has single leaves. They
are dark yellow-green
above, a grayish-white
beneath, flat, and round-
ed at the end. The stems are very slender, the
whole leaf not over a half-inch long.

The red-brown cones are about three quarters
of an inch long, and ripen in the autumn of the
first year. During the following winter the seeds
begin to leave the cone, and by late spring they

115

HEMLOCKS

The Hemlock 117

have all gone. The seeds are not more than an
eighth of an inch in length, but they have wings
which are twice that long.

From light brown on the younger twigs and
a darker shade on the branches, hemlock bark
becomes reddish-brown in color on the tree-
trunks. There it is thick, and deeply cut by
narrow ridges. The brown wrood, though light
and soft, is coarse-grained and brittle. Its odor
is unpleasant, and the wood is fit for little but
rough building lumber. It is not lasting when
exposed to the air. Yet the hemlock is a hand-
some tree in the forest; and though its wood
is of little value as lumber, the bark, for many
years, has furnished by far the greater part of
the material used for tanning leather, both in the
United States and Canada. And some of the wood
is now being made into pulp for newspapers.

The Balsam Fir

THE balsam fir is a tree we should all know and
love, for the balsam makes a perfect "Christmas
tree." It is not a large tree, seldom more than
fifty feet tall, nor more than a foot or two thick.
The leaves are small, not over an inch long. They
grow singly, in two rows, on the side and top of
the twig. In color they are a beautiful dark
green on the upper side, pale green below and
very flat. The same leaves remain on the tree
for a long time, often eight or ten years, before
falling off and making room for new ones.

Balsam cones are very large, three or four
inches long and at least an inch thick. They are

118

The Balsam Fir 119

dark purple and covered with fine, short hairs.
Like those of the other cone-bearers, the balsam's
seeds have little wings and are easily carried by
the wind. The cone-scales, with the seeds, drop
from the cone in the fall. Through the winter
the bare stems left look like a great many little
spikes standing erect on the branches.

The bark on the twigs and younger trunks is
thin, smooth, and light brown; that on the old
trees is thick, rough, and reddish-brown. The
wood is light, soft, and pale brown in color.
It does not make good lumber, though some-
times pulp paper is made of it. The leaves of this
tree have an odor sweeter than any other of the
sweet woods smells. At Christmas it fills the
house with its fragrance. In the forest, balsam
boughs give the woodsman an ideal bed and
pillow.

BALSAM FIRS IN WINTER

The Red Cedar

THE home of the red cedar or juniper is in the
swamps and low lands of the North, where it
grows slowly and lives to an old age. It is usually
a small tree, and one that looks very little like
the other conifers.

On this one tree there are two kinds of leaves,
and all cling to the tree for five or six years before
they finally fall. One leaf is needlelike, a quarter
or half inch long; the other is scalelike, sharp-
pointed, and much shorter. Both are attached
to the twig in clusters of two or three.

Cedar cones do not look like cones at all. They
look more like berries. You can see no scales on
them as on the pine and spruce cones. They are
pale green when fully grown, dark blue or purple
when ripe, and are very small and round, with
quite a sweet taste. Sometimes these little cones

121

RED CEDARS

The Red Cedar 123

are called " juniper berries." Inside each berry
are two or three tiny seeds.

The cedar has red bark and a light, soft wood.
As the sweetness of the balsam comes from its
leaves, the fragrance of the cedar comes from
its wood. The younger wood on the outside of
the tree's trunk is almost white. Farther in, it
is dark red. In use cedar wood is very lasting.
It is much used for lining closets and chests. The
oil in the wood gives it a peculiar odor which pro-
tects the clothing placed in cedar chests from
moths and other insects.

In early days the cedar post found wide use
in rustic fence lines, where it stood for years
without decay. Sometimes it is so used now, but
nearly everywhere it has become scarce and very
costly. Because of its fine, straight grain, the
wood of the cedar has long been used as a cover-
ing for the lead of pencils. The tree itself is never
very large, nor very handsome, yet it is one of
the most useful in America.

The Beech

THE trees with needlelike leaves, with small
seeds in their cones, are mostly evergreens.
Conifers, they are called. The others, with broad
leaves and no cones, the seeds usually growing
separately, are broadleaf or hardwood trees.

The wood of a cone-bearing tree is quite soft,
often filled with pitch, while the broadleaves
nearly always have a harder, finer wood. The
pine and spruce are softwoods, but the beech,
birch, hickory, oak, and many other trees belong
to the hardwood family. Many of the hardwoods
come up as shoots or sprouts from the stumps of

124

The Beech 125

old trees that have been cut down, but the coni-
fers rarely grow except from seed.

In all North America there are many kinds of
pines, a great many oaks, and several different
maples. But there is only one beech, which
most of us know for its small, sweet nuts. It is
a beautiful tree, rising in the forest to a height
of seventy or eighty feet, often with stout, low-
growing branches that make it an easy tree to
climb.

The beech has a very old tree name, and many
old, odd uses. The root of the word is found in
an ancient language of the Hindus, a people of
India; and the men of centuries ago, long before
those times of which the Bible tells, wrote down
their thoughts on strips of beech cut smooth
and thin.

Beech leaves are of one piece, or " simple." The
edges are sharp-pointed, with a small tooth at
the end of each vein. The leaves, three or four
inches long, are dark green on the surface,
lighter underneath and very thin. The buds are
a rich brown, and are long and pointed. Below
the buds are the leaf scars — the tiny scars left
on the twigs by last year's leaves.

BEECH TREES IN WINTER

The Beech 127

Two or three of the sweet, three-cornered beech
nuts come in a prickly husk which splits open
at the top. With the first frosts of fall they ripen,
and while the burs remain on the tree, the nuts
fall to the ground below. Squirrels, mice, blue-
jays, and even deer are very fond of them.

The beech has smooth, silvery bark. Its wood is
light red, strong and tough. It has so little taste or
smell that boxes and barrels for holding butter,
sugar, and other foodstuffs are made of its wood.

In the first days of our own land there was
little use for beech, for it was tough and hard to
split. The trees were seldom cut except to clear
the land for crops. Later, when the wood became
better known, and the uses for wood grew, it was
sometimes made into axles and shafts for water-
wheels, where its strength made it lasting and
valuable. It also, as charcoal, soon found its
way into some of the earliest blacksmith shops.
The shoes which many Dutch children wear are
nothing but pieces of beechwood hollowed out
and shaped to fit the foot. Thousands of these
shoes are made in this country every year.

The Chestnut

THE chestnut is a noble tree, often growing
a hundred feet high, with a straight trunk and a
broad, spreading crown. The leaves are pointed
and narrow, six or seven inches long and two or
three inches wide. Like those of the beech, they
have sharp little teeth which point toward the
top of the leaf. The buds are brown and shaped
something like an oval.

The chestnut, as it falls from the tree, must
be handled with care, for sharp spines cover the
burs, which hold two or three of the nuts. They
are carefully done up in a small silk wrapper;
packed in a case looking almost like leather; and
buried in soft, downy pulp. Last of all, the nuts

128

The Chestnut 129

are tightly sealed up in a waterproof safe, and
over all is a prickly coat looking much like that
of a hedgehog.

The tree itself has dark brown, furrowed bark,
and a soft brown wood. It is used for railroad
ties, for fence posts, and for making cheap fur-
niture, and lasts for many years, even when
exposed to the rain and sun. An extract for
tanning leather is made from the bark and wood.

" And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,

Tossed its great arms about,
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
Dropped to the ground beneath."

A few years ago, a fungous disease known as the
"chestnut blight," which we have already de-
scribed on page 77, began to attack the chestnut
trees in the vicinity of New York. It spread into
the New England states and also to the west and
south, causing the destruction of entire forests
as well as of individual trees. The loss thus oc-
casioned to owners of timber has been great,
amounting to millions of dollars. No means of
checking the disease has yet been discovered.

STORY OF THE FOREST - J)

The Shagbark Hickory

THE hickory, like the beech and chestnut, is
best known for its nuts. But though, like the
beech and chestnut, it is a nut-bearing tree, it
is in many ways very different from them.

The hickory is a tall and slender tree, fre-
quently seventy or eighty feet high, with stout
branches and an open crown. The leaves are
often as much as a foot long. They are made
up of five to seven smaller leaflets growing on one
stem. The single leaves of the other trees were
" simple." These are "compound." The leaflets

131

132 How to Know the Trees

at the base are rather small, but those at the
top are much larger, usually six or seven inches
long and nearly half as broad. These dark
green leaflets are finely toothed at the edges, and
very fragrant when you crush them in your hand.
The dark brown buds are over a half -inch long.
They are covered with fine, soft hairs.

The hickory nut, like the beechnut and chest-
nut, comes in a husk. But the husk of the hick-
ory nut is round, with a smooth coat, and holds
just one nut. When it ripens in October, this
thick husk splits open in four or more pieces,
and falls from the nut. The nut too is round,
with a thick, hard shell and large sweet meats
inside.

There is a very shaggy appearance to the hick-
ory tree. It is another tree which you may easily
recognize by the bark. The bark is smooth and
gray on the twigs and younger branches; on the
old trees it is dark gray and thick, hanging
from the trunk in long strips forced out by the
growing wood inside. This wood is very strong
and hard, and light brown in color. Hickory,
when green, is heavier than water, and sinks in
it like a stone. Hickory is used wherever a strong,

HICKORY TREES

134 How to Know the Trees

tough wood is needed. The handle of the wood-
man's ax is nearly always made of hickory, and
much of it finds its way into the wheels and
bodies of carriages and wagons. With beech,
birch, and maple, it is also much used as fire-
wood.

The White Oak

ONE of the grandest and most valuable trees
growing in any country is the white oak of our
American forests. Its growth is slow; but it is
also slow to die, and lives to a great age. The
thick, strong trunk often towers upward for
more than a hundred feet, bearing a broad
crown of leaves.

The leaves are five to nine inches long, bright
green on the surface, and a lighter shade of green
underneath. In autumn the green becomes
a beautiful red, turning later in the season to

135

The White Oak 137

a rich brown. The edges are smooth, but the
leaves are deeply notched or lobed. Some of
the lobes are wide, with broad, shallow spaces
between each one; others are narrower, and the
space between deeper. The oak is not an ever-
green, but many of its leaves cling to the tree
through the winter. The buds of the oak are
brown, and covered with small scales.

The fruit or seed is a light brown acorn, which
rests in a little cup. This nut is nearly three
quarters of an inch long, with a very sweet kernel
inside. It is ripe in the fall, and the wild animals
and some of the birds are very fond of the white
oak acorn. Those small tree-planters, the squir-
rels, eat many of them, and the wild ducks and
blue jays many more.

The bark on the young twigs and branches is
light green. On the old tree-trunks it is thick and
nearly white. The wood of the white oak is
light brown, heavy, and very tough. It is last-
ing, and is used far and wide in a great many
ways, from building ships to furnishing houses.

In the woods the old oaks, with moss-grown
trunks and twisted limbs, stretch far above the
other trees. They grow to a larger size and live

138 How to Know the Trees

to a greater age than most of their neighbors.
Some people call the white oak the King of the
Forest.

"The oak," says Washington Irving, "is an
emblem of what a true nobleman should be; a
refuge for the weak, a shelter for the oppressed,
a defense for the defenseless; warding off from
the peltings of the storm, or the scorching rays
of arbitrary power."

A song to the oak, the brave old oak,
Who hath ruled in the greenwood long;

Here 's health and renown to his broad green crown,
And his fifty arms so strong.

There 's fear in his frown when the sun goes down,

And the fire in the west fades out;
And he showeth his might on a wild midnight,

When the storm through his branches shout.

Then here's to the oak, the brave old oak,

Who stands in his pride alone;
And still flourish he, a hale green tree,

When a hundred years are gone.

Henry F. Chorley.

The American Elm

THE American elm, with its lofty spreading
crown rising above a large, straight trunk, is one
of the most beautiful shade trees that we have.
Often its trunk is six feet in thickness, and some-
times it grows to be over a hundred feet high.
Far above the ground the trunk divides into a
few large branches, which turn up and out, giv-
ing to the elm a shape much like a vase.

Its dark green, oval leaves are from three to
five inches long and about half as broad. They
are double-toothed at the edge, with little teeth
upon the larger ones. At the base one side is
shorter than the other. Some leaves have curved

AN AMERICAN ELM

The American Elm 141

or broken veins, but those in the elm leaf are
almost straight. The buds, like the leaves, are
oval in shape, smooth, and light brown. They
are not more than an eighth of an inch long,
with large leaf scars beneath them.

The elm's seeds ripen early in May. They are
winged and small, not over half an inch long.
They grow in clusters on the tree. The seeds are
smooth on both sides and flat. The wings of the
seeds are light, and look something like paper.
They are hairy along the edges.

The elm has light green twigs, which later turn
reddish-brown, and finally gray. On the old
trees the bark is gray and deeply -furrowed. The
light brown wood is heavy, strong, and not easily
split. Many baskets and barrels are made of it ;
the wheels on bicycles have elm rims; and for
the hubs of wagon wheels, elm has no equal.
Even those in the "One-Hoss Shay" of Oliver
Wendell Holmes were made of elm.

The Canoe Birch

THE Indian of long ago found the canoe birch
to be the most useful tree that grew. To this
day its uses are many, different though they are
from those of the early days. But it is not only
a useful tree — it is a very handsome tree as
well, with slender, tapering trunk, and a height
of sixty to seventy feet.

The leaves, two or three inches long and nearly
as broad, are dark green above and lighter below.
They are very thick, with little sawlike teeth
pointing sharply forward. The birch buds are

142

The Canoe Birch 143

small, flat, and sharp-pointed. The fruit ripens
in autumn, when it falls apart. The seeds them-
selves are winged, the nut narrower than the
filmy wings on each side, which help the winds to
carry them far and wide.

On the canoe birch the bark is of many colors
- from dark red on the twigs to a beautiful
creamy white on the trunk; nearer the ground it
is almost black. The inner bark is orange-colored
and easily stripped from the trunk. Thin sheets
of it give to the woodsman a sheet fairer and more
fragrant than the finest papers made by man.

The wood is light and hard, with a reddish
tinge. The lasts used for making shoes are often
of birch. Shoe pegs, too, are made of it, and
many articles in daily use, from small spools to
school desks and church pews.

Valuable as the wood is, it is the birch bark
for which the tree is famous. It was the one tree
the Indian could not well have done without.
Broad sheets of this light, strong bark gave him
his "wigwam." His fires were kindled with
strips of the outer bark and kept burning with
the wood of the same tree, a wood that, green
or dry, will always burn.

CANOE BIRCH TREES

The Canoe Birch 145

When the Indian's dried meat gave out during
a long winter, the inner bark dried and pow-
dered supplied him with flour that lasted until
the next hunting season. Torches, too, were
made of birch bark, and dishes, pots, and pans
at a time when there were none of tin.

But best of all from the birch came the Indian
canoe. Strips of the bark peeled from the tree in
spring, with the running of the sap, gave to the
Indian a boat both strong and light. The canoe
carried him near and far on hunt and chase, in
peace and on the war path, over the lonely
waters of wooded lake or stream.

For a century and a half, the birch-bark canoe
of the red man was the craft of hunter and trap-
per, missionary, and explorer. It carried them
where no other boat could go, helping the work
of discovery and settlement and civilization in
the new country.

STORY OF THE FOREST - 10

The Tulip Tree

THERE is one forest tree with a blossom so
beautiful that from this blossom comes its name
- the tulip tree or yellow poplar. The tree itself
is handsome, often growing to a height of one
hundred and fifty feet, with a clean, straight
stem without a branch for many feet above the
ground. It is the largest broadleaf tree in
America. Tulip trees grow especially well in the
mountains of the South, where some of them have
been found two hundred feet high, with trunks
ten feet in thickness.

146

The Tulip Tree 147

The leaves are very different from those of the
white oak, elm, and birch. They are four-lobed,
often six inches long, with a stem of about the
same length. The leaf is very broad, with two
pointed lobes at the sides, and a blunt end as if it
had been cut off there. On their surface the tulip's
leaves are a very dark green, with a lighter shade
underneath. These colors change in autumn
until the whole leaf becomes a clear, brilliant
yellow. The buds, with large leaf scars beneath,
are dark red, flat, and covered with a whitish
bloom or powder.

The blossoms appear on the tree in May or
June, after the leaves themselves are well out.
They are one and a half to two inches long,
having six petals, which are greenish yellow,
with a spot of orange. The fruit ripens in the
fall — September or October — and is like a cone.
This light brown cone is two or three inches
long, narrow and pointed. It is made up of many
long, winged seeds which overlap each other.

Young tulip twigs are smooth and red, later
becoming brown, then gray. When you bruise
them they have a peppery smell. On the young
tree-trunks the bark is gray and very thin; on

A GROUP OE TULIP TREES

The Tulip Tree 149

the older trees it is thick and brown, with deep
furrows.

The wood of the tree is soft and yellow, and
there are many markets for it. Poplar is largely
used in making furniture, and the woodwork
in railroad cars and automobiles is often made
of it. Paper is another of its products.

The tree has sometimes been called the
"canoe wood." This canoe wood and the canoe
birch are seldom found together, for poplar grows
better in the South, the other in the colder climate
farther North. From earliest days, where the
tulip grew, dugout canoes were made of it. A
boat built of wood is heavier, of course, than
one of bark, but it is also stronger, and both the
Indians and the earlier settlers in the South used
the dugout. In fact, history tells us that several
times in the Indian wars, men of the South left
their settlements to attack the Indians on the
frontier. They went by water, a safer and a
quicker way, and the boats in which they went
were poplar dugouts.

The Sugar Maple

THIS is the tree called by some the "sugar
tree," by others the hard or sugar maple. But
it is known to nearly every one as the source of
maple sirup and maple sugar.

There are several other varieties of maples, as
the red maple, the Norway maple, the mountain
maple; but none of these is so valuable or so
widely known as the sugar maple.

The sugar maple is a Northern tree, and in
some states the most important hardwood. It

150

The Sugar Maple 151

reaches a height of seventy -five or a hundred feet,
with a trunk two or three feet in diameter. The
crown, in shape, is like a broad, round dome.

Maple leaves are four and five inches long
and about as broad, with large lobe-like teeth.
The leaves in spring are a beautiful light green,
turning darker as summer comes. In autumn
much of the beauty of woods and hills comes from
the maple leaves, which by then have taken on
many brilliant colors — orange, red, and yellow.
The maple's buds are very small, and of a red-
dish-brown hue. They lie close to the twig.

The seeds, like those of the birch and tulip,
are ripe in autumn. They grow in pairs, two tiny
seeds at the base, and each with a thin, flat wing.
These wings are much larger than the rest of the
seed, about an inch long. With them the seeds
ride lightly on the wind.

As the maple twigs become branches the bark
covering them changes in color from light brown
to gray, though on both it is very smooth. The
bark over the old tree-trunks is broken up by
furrows, and is of a darker gray.

This tree has a wood both strong and heavy.
Many articles for the home are made of maple,

The Sugar Maple 153

from rolling pins and wooden dishes to organs
and pianos. It is the wood used in many bowling
alleys and roller-skating rinks, and it makes a
handsome hardwood floor.

The present uses of maple are rarer and more
expensive than those of years ago, when maple
was a wood of general utility. In the settlement
of America the homemade rifle stock was fre-
quently of curly maple, and a great backlog of
this same wood was found in many a settler's
fireplace. For rough sleigh runners it was often
used, as well as in much of the old-style wooden-
ware; the ashes were considered very good for
soft-soap making; and in the cabins were often
violins and homemade spinning wheels of this
valuable hardwood.

Sometimes the grain of the maple has a beau-
tiful " curly" look. This is known as "bird's-
eye maple," and furniture made of it is highly
prized. Bird's-eye maple is merely an accidental
variety of sugar maple. While growing in the for-
est, some of the buds have been unable to push
their way through the thick bark of the tree-
trunk. They therefore remained beneath it year
after year, while the various layers of new wood

154 How to Know the Trees

have grown over them. When at last the tree is
cut, the buds are still there, forming a portion of
the wood and looking very much like a great
many little birds' eyes.

In the chapter on maple sugar, we shall learn
something more about this tree, and its great
economic value to man.

WORK IN THE WOODS

With the Woodsmen

ABRAHAM LINCOLN and some of our other
early presidents were born in log cabins. Not
many of these log cabins are in existence now,
but something quite similar may be seen in the
great lumber camps in Maine, New York, Michi-
gan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. These are occu-
pied by men from the towns and cities who go
to the woods to find employment through the
fall and winter. Such men are called loggers or
"lumberjacks." They have almost a language
of their own, and there are many things about
them which are strange to us.

157

158 Work in the Woods

Many loggers usually live together. They all
sleep in what is known as a "bunk house."
They have no large, clean beds, no sheets nor
pillows. Instead, each man has a little "bunk,"
covered with thick spreads or heavy woolen
blankets. This bunk, or sleeping box, is just
long enough to hold him, and not much more
than two feet wide. There are many of these
little beds around the one large room of the
bunk house, sometimes three rows of them,
built one above another, between the rough
floor and the bark roof. Down next the floor, or
in a corner of the bunk, is the lumberjack's bag,
or "turkey," a rough valise, or only a sack,
which holds most of his belongings.

The weather is cold in the North Woods. But
the cabins of the logging camp are always warm.
Dry moss is packed between the chinks in the
logs to keep out the cold winds. In the center
of the room is a large, round stove, often red-hot,
where huge chunks of wood are burned. The bunk
house has but few windows, for too many of them
would make the place cold. The two or three in
the cabin are so small that a man could scarcely
crawl through one of them.

With the Woodsmen 159

Every evening after supper, fifty or sixty men
sit around the fire on stools and boxes or upon
the long "deacon seat" which is just in front
of their bunks. Of course, they have no chairs
in the woods. They tell stories, or sing woods
songs, to amuse themselves before going to
bed. Perhaps some are grinding their axes in
the log blacksmith shop outside. They go to
bed about eight o'clock, for they must rise very
early.

At half -past four in the morning a bell is rung
loudly. The cook is ringing it to wake the men
up. It is very cold and dark, but it is almost
breakfast time in the woods. Some of the men
are already up and have left the bunk house.
They are the teamsters, who have gone to the
log stables to give breakfast to the horses before
eating their own.

The Backwoods Dining Room

IT does not take the lumberjacks long to dress,
for when they go to bed they take off only their
caps and shoes. Warmly dressed, they are not
cold during the night when the fire in the cabin
stove dies down. On rising, the woodsmen wash
in their tin basins with ice-cold water from some
nearby spring or river. The cold water soon
gets them wide awake.

Once more the great bell outside is rung, and
the men rush out of the bunk house. These men
are always very hungry, and there is no waiting
until everyone is seated at the table. Each thinks
of himself, for in the woods the rule is "first
come, first served."

It is just a step through the snow outside to
the kitchen and dining room, both together in
another log house called the "cook shanty."
Here are long wooden tables. There are no
tablecloths, and the lumberjacks have no nap-
kins. There are no glasses for the water, but all

160

The Backwoods Dining Room 161

the men drink from a single tin dipper. The
knives and forks, and all the plates and cups, are
made of iron or tin. The men sit on wooden
benches and boxes beside the tables.

STARTING OUT

Their breakfast usually consists of black tea,
baked beans, apple sauce, hot biscuits, large
griddlecakes, and pie. They eat rapidly, very
seldom talking to each other during the meal.
These rough men are very likely to quarrel among
themselves, or waste too much time in eating;

STORY OF THE FOREST -11

162 Work in the Woods

therefore there is usually a rule that they must
not talk while they are at the table. In the
woods the cooking is always done by a man,
for feeding so many hungry mouths is hard
work. He generally has two boys or "cookees"
to help him. They split the wood, build the fires,
and wash the tin dishes after the men have
eaten.

In about ten minutes breakfast is over. It is
still very dark outside, but it is time to start for
the woods. It is cold, and the lumberjacks all
put on their heavy coats and caps and woolen
mittens. The teamsters go for their horses; the
rest for lanterns, saws, and axes, and all are
off for a day in the woods.

Felling the Trees

IT is at least a mile to the place where the men
are going to work. The twinkling lights of their
lanterns serve as a guide over the white road.
The snow crunches under their feet, and frosty
snappings resound through the great forest.
Hundreds of tiny stars are fading from sight
overhead, and a large, full moon grows paler
and paler up among the treetops. In the east a
warm, red glow spreading over the dark sky,
shows that the sunrise is not far off.

All too soon for the pleasure of the men the
end of the trip is reached, and the song of the ax
and saw begins on every hand. In the picture
on page 165, some of these men are seen just
starting to cut down a tall pine. One of them has
notched the tree on the farther side with an ax.
This notch makes the tree fall in the right direc-
tion, and prevents the splitting of the trunk.

The notch being cut, the lumberjacks are
ready to use the crosscut saw. It is nearly

163

164 Work in the Woods

eight feet in length and very sharp. There is a
wooden handle on each end. In the woods two
men usually work together, for in that way they
are able to do more work. If one of the men is
hurt in handling the sharp axes or heavy timber,
the other can go for help.

What a clear, ringing noise the saw makes as
it cuts its way slowly, but just as surely, into the
tree-trunk. It seems to be singing a cheery song.
After awhile, at the very tiptop, the pine be-
gins to sway from side to side. "Timber!" the
men cry, and the tree falls swiftly to the ground.

The men leap on it with their shining axes.
They soon "lop" off all the tree's branches; the
branches are not fit for lumber, and would only
make the moving of the logs more difficult.
This being done, they pick up their saw again,
cutting the tree-trunk into two or three long
pieces or logs. Then they move on to attack other
trees.

FELLING A TREE

Hauling the Logs

THERE comes a man with a team of horses.
What fine, large animals the horses are! Each
one of them weighs more than a thousand
pounds; but they have need of all their strength
in moving logs which often weigh as much or
more than they. The horses drag a long steel
chain behind them. At the end of the chain are
some iron hooks. The driver fastens the hooks
in one end of a large log, shouts to his horses, and
away they go. The log is heavy, yet the horses
almost run with it.

166

Hauling the Logs

167

Soon they arrive at the "skidway." Here the
logs as they come in are piled upon " skids"
two longer logs or poles laid parallel to each other
and at right angles to the road. The man with
his horses continues bringing logs to be loaded
on the skids.

At the skidway a road of ice begins. It is a
familiar sight to see street sprinklers at work in
summer along city streets. The woodsmen have
been using a sprinkler here. It is not just the same

A (;OOI> LOAD

168 Work in the Woods

as a city sprinkler, but it looks very much like
one of them on runners. The runners are bent
up at each end, and the road sprinkler may be
hauled in either direction by the horses without
turning it around. The men fill the sprink-
ler with pails of water from some nearby lake or
river. Then they drive back over the snow road
through the woods. The water is turned on and
soon freezes solid. It is so easy for the horses to
draw large loads of logs over such hard, icy roads
that in some places where the road goes down hill,
straw is scattered to check the speed of the sleds.
At the skidway the logs are rolled upon great
sleds drawn by horses. Thirty or forty logs often
make a load, and from the skidway they go to
the "yard" or "log landing" on the high bank of
a river not far away. Here each log is deeply
branded on one end by striking into it a heavy
iron hammer which carries in raised letters the
initials or private mark of the men who own
the logs. The river is covered with ice from shore
to shore, and the logs are left there in piles to
wait for warmer weather.

The Log Drive

WITH the coming of spring the river ice melts
and breaks up. The water begins to rise, and
the melting ice and snow make an angry flood
of the once quiet stream. It is time for the
"drive."

A crew of hardy men, the "river drivers," now
take the places of the lumberjacks. These men
must drive the logs downstream for many miles
to the mills below. The men tumble the logs into
the water. In a very short time the river is full
of them. Several logs catch against each other
and stop. A driver jumps out from the shore.
He runs across to them, jumping from one log to
another. In his hand is a "peavey," a stout stick
six feet long, with a steel hook fastened to one
side, and a sharp metal spike on the end. He
grips the logs with this, pries apart those that
have caught, and soon has them floating freely
again.

Many of these men do not know how to swim.
If they were to slip from the logs they would prob-

169

The Log Drive 171

ably be drowned. But this seldom happens. They
wear heavy boots with spiked soles, and are
quick and active at riding the tumbling logs.

The logs are now coming to the rapids — ' ' white
water," the Indians called them, becatise of the
white spray that is dashed up by the rocks. The
logs fly along faster than ever. All at once one
of them catches on a rock; others catch on that;
soon they fill the stream. River men call this a
" log jam." In the river, all is blocked from shore
to shore. Behind come thousands of logs with
the swift current of the stream. They leap and
toss about as the angry river forces them on.

A good driver jumps out on the jam. "A white
water man," the others call him, for he is braver
and more experienced than they. In a mo-
ment he has found the "key" log, the one that
is holding the others back. He loosens it with
his peavey. The whole mass begins to grind
away and move on downstream. The driver
turns toward the shore, running for his life from
log to log. If he should fall among them he would
be crushed to death. But he reaches the shore
in safety, and the logs float swiftly forward on
their last journey. Some jams are not so easily

172 Work in the Woods

broken up. Great charges of dynamite must
occasionally be used to loosen the piles of logs.
The river drivers get wet every day. Often
they fall from slippery logs into the ice-cold

DRIVERS AT WORK

water. But they never catch cold. They ride
the smallest logs with ease, and with only a pole
skillfully guide the larger ones in the stream.
They eat their lunch beside the river, and never
stop work until long after dark at night. Theirs
is a rough, hard life, and one of constant danger.

Western Woods

MANY of the trees which grow in the far West
are of great size. The logs being too large and
heavy for horses to haul, donkey engines and
steam engines are used instead. The donkey
engine is small but strong. It is fitted up with a
cable and drum. A cable is a strong rope made of
steel, and a drum is a large roller on which the
cable is wound. When the lumberjacks have
fastened the cable to the logs, the engine is
started, and the cable rolled around the drum.
Even the largest logs are dragged through the
woods easily and rapidly. When the donkey
engine itself must be moved, the cable is fastened
to a live, standing tree. As the engine winds the
rope, it pulls itself nearer the first tree, then to
another, and so on until it has gone far enough.

In the picture, the donkey engine has just
pulled the logs in from where they once stood
as trees. The small steam engine will take them
next. A steam engine looks odd in the woods.

173

174

Work in the Woods

Its tracks are nothing more than wooden poles.
The men use poles instead of iron rails because
the former are so light that they can easily be
moved from place to place. And such rails are
very cheap in the forest.

IN WESTKRX WOODS

Western Woods 17,5

The steam engine starts, the logs begin to move.
There are many of them fastened together, form-
ing a train of logs. For several miles they are
dragged like this, until they come to a real rail-
road.

The railroad track is beside a steep hill, and
the logs from the woods are easily rolled upon
the flatcars. See how large those logs are — one
log makes a carload. Heavy chains around the
logs keep them from rolling off the cars; if they
were to fall off, the logging train would probably
be wrecked. The track is far too rough for much
speed, and the train moves slowly around the
sharp curves and over the high wooden trestles
of the railroad that leads to the mill.

The Mill

AT last the mill is reached. It stands near a
large pond, beside which the train stops. The
chains are unfastened and off go the logs, rolling
down a short, steep hill into the water.

A long chain with sharp hooks runs up from
the log pond to the mill. A man with a long
pole keeps the logs moving toward the chain.
The hooks catch each log, and hold it fast. Up

176

The Mill 177

it goes. Soon, with many other logs, it reaches
the top and stops. In a few minutes the " sawyer "
is ready for it.

The log is rolled upon the log carriage. This
carriage moves backward and forward very
rapidly. Each time, the saw takes a thin slice
from the log. The great handsaws in the modern
mill make short work of the largest log, and one
saw cuts up hundreds of logs in a day.

The handsaw cuts the log into rough planks
and bark slabs. The slabs go to the "burner"
with the waste wood; smaller saws trim the bark
from the edges of the boards, others cut off their
uneven ends, and the bright new boards are sent
out to the "yard." This is a yard of another
sort, where lumber of the same size and kind
is stacked together in high piles so that the sun
and wind can dry it. The piles stand close to-
gether, and narrow alleys run between the rows.

When a few months' exposure in the open air
has dried them out, the piles are torn down. The
lumber is loaded on two-wheeled trucks, and
drawn by horses to the planing mill. In the plan-
ing mill are many smaller saws and planers. The
saws cut and trim the boards to many lengths

STORY OF THE FOREST - 12

178 Work in the Woods

and widths. The sharp knives in the planing ma-
chines smooth off the rough edges and surfaces.
The lumber from the yard goes through one ma-
chine or another, and comes out as flooring,
ceiling, moulding, or lath.

But a little while ago this lumber was living
and growing in the forest; it was part of a tree.
Then the tree was cut down and made into logs,
the logs into boards and timbers. Now it is ready
for use. From the mill the forest products go to
the waiting cars outside. In the cars they are
sent to every state in the Union. Some of them
go to seaports, from which they are shipped to
many countries abroad.

BY-PRODUCTS OF THE FOREST

Paper Made from Wood

THE logs in some forests, instead of going
through a sawmill and coming out as lumber,
pass through another sort of mill where they are
made into something quite different. "Paper
made from wood " sounds almost impossible, yet
every day, in great mills, logs are being con-
verted into printing paper, wrapping paper, and
cardboard.

Until 1854, paper was made almost altogether
from the fibers of cotton, hemp, or flax. Then a
new method was found, of making certain kinds
of paper from wood. Wood used in making pulp
or paper is called "pulp wood." There are
thousands of pulp logs here — spruce, hemlock,
balsam, pine, and perhaps other kinds as well.

181

182

By-Products of the Forest

Some have been brought by the railroads;
others have been floated down to the paper mill

A TAPER MILL

from the woods above. The logs of most hard-
woods, when fresh-cut and green, are so heavy
that they will not float. But these pulp woods
are light, floating easily on the water. Great
rafts of them are carried here from the woods by
the swift current of the river.

All of the logs in a drive are not owned by a
single man or company, for many loggers use the
same river for their spring drives. Such being

Paper made from Wood

183

the case, these logs are branded on one end with
the initials or other mark of the person who owns
them. Afterwards, the men at the pond sort out
the logs, bringing together all of the same mark.
They are taken from the water and from the cars
beside the river and placed in high piles. As soon
as they are needed they are again loaded on
small cars, and run into the paper mill.

IX THE ]NI1LL

In the mill small, sharp knives soon cut the
bark from each log as it comes along. Others bore

184

By-Products of the Forest

out the knots, and the log is cut into small bolts
a foot long and five or six inches thick. These
are shot into a huge machine called a "hog."
This hog is a powerful grinder, and the wood,

PULP VATS

after going through it, is in small chips, and
ready to be "cooked."

When cooking or steaming has softened the
chips, they are ready to be taken into the "beater
room." There, in immense tanks, the wood is
reduced to fibers, which are beaten or bruised

Paper Made from Wood 185

until they form a stiff pulp --the pulp from
which paper is made.

The pulp from the beaters is then run into
large chests. These chests supply a still larger vat,
which is connected with the "machine room."
Here enough of the pulp to make a sheet of the
right thickness is dipped up on fine wire cloth.
Of course it is still very wet from cooking, but
as soon as the pulp is raised from the vat, the
water begins to drain through the wire cloth.
Along the edges is a removable frame which
keeps the pulp from running off with the water.

As the pulp is run through the machines, the
fibers become intertwined and matted together.
It is gradually rolled into a thick, smooth sheet
of pulp. Further pressure squeezes out any water
left in the pulp, reducing the sheet of paper to
the desired thickness. The sheets are then run
over large heated drums and dried, after which
they are ready for "sizing." At the end, sheets
of the same size are wound up in great rolls.

Paper-making is a continuous business. The
whole process is like a great endless chain, and
the mills are kept running day and night, with-
out a stop.

186 By-Products of the Forest

Various kinds of wood are made into as many
different kinds of paper. Printing and packing
papers and pasteboard are made from pine; pop-
lar is made into fine white papers for books and

magazines; hemlock, spruce, and balsam supply
most of the coarse paper on which the newspapers
are printed. All the spruce trees that grow on
five acres of forest land are required to make the
paper for printing one day's issue of a large
city newspaper.

The Charcoal Burners

THOUSANDS of cords of wood are made every
year into charcoal, an important fuel that is used
not only in many homes, but in large iron and
steel plants as well. There are several ways of
making charcoal, but where wood is plentiful and
cheap the "open pit" is used.

A place in the heart of the forest is chosen by
the charcoal burners for their pit. This is near
the supply of wood to be used in it, and the cut
wood is stacked up nearby. Large logs are not
often used, for better charcoal is made from

187

188

By-Products of the Forest

the saplings and young sprouts. Sticks from
four to six inches thick are best, but some of
those used are even smaller.

READY FOR BURNING

When the wood is stacked and ready to be
burned, the grass sods are taken up from the
place where the pit is to be made. This is in the
shape of a circle twenty or thirty feet across, and
there the earth is packed down tight. The burn-
ers place a layer of brushwood over the earth,
and in the center drive a long stake. The wood.

The Charcoal Burners 189

split into many small pieces three or four feet
long, is stacked up about the central stake. More
wood is piled up in the same manner until the
ground is well covered. Then another layer of
sticks is placed over the first. On top of this a
third layer is built up, making the finished pile,
about twelve feet in height. Such piles frequently
contain as much as fifty cords of wood.

This great stack of wood is then covered
with dry earth to the depth of two or three inches.
Over this earth the sods taken from the ground
are laid. In the whole pile only two open places
are left, one at the bottom, the other at the top.
The lower hole is filled with chips and a fire is
kindled. Smoke begins to pour from the top,
and the whole heap is soon ablaze. Flames fol-
low the smoke to the top of the pit. Then this
hole is covered with a heavy piece of sod.

Sometimes, soon after the flames have been
checked in this way, explosions follow. Parts of
the dirt roof over the pile are blown off, but the
men quickly cover them up again with dry earth.
At last, when there is less smoke and no more
explosions, the hole near the ground is also
closed. After this, the pile needs but very little

190

By-Products of the Forest

attention. The fires that were started at the base
slowly eat their way to the top until the whole
pile is in a glow; then more earth is thrown over
it. In five or six days a small hole is made in one
side of the heap. If there are no flames to be
seen, the wood has become charcoal; if flames
come out, the pile must be left burning for a
few days longer.

The burned pile is then taken down, and the
charcoal carried from the "hearth" in long, flat
baskets. It is hauled to the towns in wagons that

The Charcoal Burners

191

carry in one load two hundred and fifty bushels
of charcoal. That seems a large load for two
horses to draw, but the charcoal is far lighter
than the wood from which it was made. It
weighs only a quarter as much as it did before
and takes up less than half the space.

The charcoal is easier to light than wood; it
burns almost without smoke, and gives a better

A LOAD OF CHARCOAL

heat. Much of it is used for heating and cook-
ing, and in days gone by, before coal was used
as it is to-day, "charcoal iron" was made in
nearly every furnace in the country.

Leather Tanned with Bark

THE wood of the chestnut tree and the bark
of the chestnut, chestnut oak, black oak, white
oak, and hemlock are used to make fine, hard
leather from the soft, green hides of animals.
The barks are more in use than the wood, and
of these the white oak bark is used in making the
best leather.

The tanbark trees are cut during the growing
season of early summer. The work is always
done at this time of the year, for then the bark
peels easiest from the tree. It is stripped from
the trunk in pieces four feet long with a "spud"
or barking iron. The strips of bark are then
stacked up against the fallen tree-trunk to dry
In a week, or perhaps sooner, the bark is cured,
and ready to be drawn on sleds to the wagon
roads running through the forest. It is after-
wards hauled to the railroad whence it is ship-
ped to different parts of the country.

On reaching the tannery, it is unloaded from

STORY OF THE FOREST -18 193

194

By-Products of the Forest

the cars and stacked in high piles, either in the
open or in long sheds. It may stay there for
months, for in most tanneries there is always
a large supply on hand. In the yards of some

A TANNERY

tanneries there is sufficient bark for two or
three years' use.

The hides, as they are brought into the tan-
nery, look very little like the leather we know.
They are soft and wet, and covered with hair
and dirt. First of all the workmen clean and
scrape them, throwing each hide as it is finished

Leather Tanned with Bark 195

into a great tank. This holds a liquid called milk
of lime, in which the hides are left to soak for five
or six days. From the tanks they go to another
room to he shaved and scraped again. The scarf-
skin or epidermis is removed from each hide,
and with it the hair, leaving them clean and
open for tanning.

In the meantime the bark, or the wood if that
is used, is going through hogs and shredders
which cut the large pieces into many small ones.
The bark is cut, crushed, and twisted at the same
time, breaking the walls of each tiny cell con-
taining the tannin. It is now in small chips of
the same size, and is thrown into vats full of
water. There it is cooked for twenty-four hours,
giving at the end of that time the tanning
"liquor."

The hides, clean and ready to be tanned, are
first hung from poles in pits of weak liquor for
coloring. They are left in them for one or two
weeks, and from these pits or "suspenders" go
to the "handlers." The handlers are a dozen
vats containing the tanning liquor, which ranges
in strength from weak in the first few to stronger
in the last.

196 By-Products of the Forest

In these vats the hides are laid flat, and handled
every day. They are raised with a tanner's hook,
piled beside the vats to drain, and then returned
to the liquor. In handling, those which were on
top when taken out are placed underneath when
put back into the pits.

Every two or three days the hides are moved
on to another of the twelve vats, each holding
a stronger liquor, until the last is reached. When
they leave that, the tanning is said to be finished.

The tanned hides are finally brushed, washed
in very weak liquors, and placed in piles. There
they are allowed to drip for several days to set
the tan. By the time they are finally dressed,
rubbed with oil, and dried, they do not have
much resemblance to the green, soiled hides that
went into the tannery only a few weeks before.

The Turpentine Orchard

WHEN we think of an orchard, it is usually as
an orchard of fruit trees; or, if in the forest, as
a grove of sugar maples producing sap and sugar.
The turpentine orchard is just as much of an
orchard, though of a very different kind. The
turpentine orchard is an orchard of Southern
pines; and "turpentining" is an industry of much
importance in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
and some of the Gulf States farther west. The
products of this orchard are what is known as
"naval stores" — tar, pitch, rosin, and turpen-
tine.

There are many methods of getting these valu-
able stores from the longleaf pines which are the
trees most used. One of the best methods now
in use in the turpentine orchard is the "cup and
gutter " system. In common with other methods,
this is carried on in January and February.

Two men, one right-handed, the other left-
handed, go into the orchard. They carry with

197

PUTTING IN THE GUTTER

The Turpentine Orchard 199

them two cornering axes, and together cut the
bark on the tree. A few inches above the ground
two flat surfaces are cut. The right-handed man
cuts one, his partner the other, and the two men
cut several hundred such surfaces in a day. Both
these surfaces combined are a little more than a
foot wide.

The next workman has a broadax for his tool.
With it he makes two slanting cuts, one in each
surface on the tree. One cut is a little lower than
the other, and he places a gutter in each of them.
The gutter is of sheet iron, two inches wide and
nearly a foot in length. It is bent into the proper
shape, two of them forming a spout, below which
an earthenware cup is hung.

Beginning in March, the surfaces over each
cup are chipped once a week with a sharp tool
called a "hack" to keep up a good flow of resin.
The hack is drawn across the two surfaces in a
slanting direction, cutting one V-shaped groove
above another in the wood of the tree. From time
to time the cups are emptied of their "dip." In
the early autumn the resin which has hardened
on the tree is also scraped off and collected.

The next season the cup and gutters are moved

HACKING

The Turpentine Orchard

201

to the upper end of last year's cut, and above it
new surfaces are made. When the third or fourth
season is reached, the gutters are removed from

A TURPENTINE STILL

the cupped trees. They are placed on new trees,
or perhaps the old tree may be "bled" again on
another side. This goes on until there is very
little bark left on the lower part of the trunk.
From the tree, the crude product is taken to the

202 By-Products of the Forest

turpentine "still." Here the crude rosin is boiled
with water, and the turpentine leaves it as a
vapor. The vapor is caught in a coil of tubes,
or "worm," where it is soon cooled by flowing
water, and becomes a liquid. When these spirits
of turpentine have been distilled, the melted rosin
is run through a trough, then turned into bar-
rels, where it quickly cools and hardens. An
acre of orchard, in three years' bleeding, will
yield as much as eight hundred pounds of
rosin and twenty -five gallons of turpentine.

The pitch and tar produced by this industry
found early use in the Southern colonies, and to-
day these naval stores are still of much import-
ance. The rosin is used in making soap, paper,
oilcloth, printing inks, and medicines; the tur-
pentine, for paints and varnishes.

IN THE SPRUCE WOODS

Spruce Gum

SPRUCE gum - - that sticky, resin-like sap of
the red spruce, which oozes from holes in the
bark, then hardens to a gum — is found only in
Northern forests. There are men who earn a

203

204 By-Products of the Forest

living by gathering this gum in the spruce woods
of New York and New England. Their work is
known as "gumming."

This gum is really the blood of the tree. It is
seldom found on perfectly healthy trees, but
often on those that have been attacked by in-
sects or injured in other ways. When a limb has
been broken from the tree, or the bark cut or
filled with the burrows of insects, Nature in her
own way repairs the damage quickly and well.
The holes are filled with a thick, sticky fluid.
At first this is pitchy and white in color. In the
cold of the first winter it becomes darker, and
hardens into many odd shapes.

Gum pickers spend much of their time in the
spring months in scarring the trees. They climb
a good-sized tree to far above the old branches.
There, in the warm sunlight, a V-shaped scar is
made on the south side of the trunk. The tree
is plainly marked near the ground on leaving,
and the picker is paid for his labor by the gum he
finds a year or two later.

By that time it is dark red and very hard.
Then it is really gum, and these men cut it from
the trees with knives. Once in a great while one

Spruce Gum 205

of the men finds a pound or two on a single tree.
It is sold in a near-by city, where two and three
dollars a pound is paid for gum fresh from the
woods.

This gum is shipped to a factory, where it is'
cleaned. The dirt and small pieces of bark are
removed by machinery. It is then ready to be
sold again, cleaner perhaps, but surely no better
than when it was found on the bark of some old
tree in the forest.

The History of Maple Sugar

As the first hunters, the first woodsmen, and
the first builders in the American wilderness
were Indians, so also were the first sugar makers.
The Indian went about his sugar making in ways
quite different from those we see and know to-
day. With the coming of the first thaws in
March, when the nights were still frosty and
cold, but the days were warm and the snow be-
ginning to melt slowly away from beneath the
trees, the red man began to make ready for
gathering the sap.

Then, as now, there were several kinds of
maples in the forests — the hard or sugar maple,
the red and silver maples, and one or two others

206

The History of Maple Sugar 207

of less importance. All of these have sweet sap,
but only that of the hard maple contains enough
sugar to be of any practical value. So the trees
which the Indians selected for his use were large,
full-crowned sugar maples, trees that had been
growing for many years and were full of sap.

On the sunny side of each tree he made a deep,
slanting cut writh his hatchet or tomahawk,
and into the lower end of this he drove a curved
piece of bark or a hollow reed. This carried the
slowly running sap to a small dish of clay or birch
bark placed on a stone at the foot of the tree.
As the dishes became full, the sap was emptied
into large troughs of elm bark, troughs which
were sometimes large enough to hold fifty or a
hundred gallons of this sweet stuff.

The sap was changed to sirup, then to sugar,
in one of two ways. Sometimes it was made
thicker and sweeter by being allowed to freeze
in shallow bark vessels. The ice, as it formed on
the surface, was thrown out, until enough water
had been removed to give a thick sirup, or a
sirup which would crystallize into sugar. This
was a slow process and its employment depended
entirely upon the condition of the weather. A

TAPPING A SUGAR TREE

The History of Maple Sugar 209

better way to evaporate the sap was by boiling;
but this also was slow and troublesome. For the
Indian, having no iron pots, could boil the sugar
water only by dropping hot stones into it.

From the days when maple sugar was a neces-
sity, down to the time when its making became a
business and its use a luxury, many changes and
improvements have been made in the methods of
its manufacture. This industry is one peculiarly
American, and one that is to-day, as it has been
in fact for many years, largely conducted by
American farmers.

The early settlers also sometimes tapped their
trees by means of deep ax cuts. The sap was
stored in great tree-trunks hollowed into rough
troughs. It was afterwards boiled down in large
kettles in the open woods. Green timber, as well
as wood already dead and down, supplied all the
fuel that was needed. The old-fashioned iron
kettle was hung over the fire from the end of a
long, stout pole, which was weighted at the other
end so that the kettle might be easily swung on
or off the fire. Sometimes a number of kettles
were hung from a single horizontal pole, or were
set into a rude furnace constructed of clay and

STORY OF THE FOREST -14

The History of Maple Sugar

stones. The sap was kept from boiling over by
dashing cold water into the kettle, or by reducing
the fire; and the pieces of bark or leaves and
other impurities were skimmed off while the
kettle was over the fire. The sirup thus produced,
if removed from the fire at the proper time,
formed a molasses, pleasant to the taste, but
dark in color and not always of good quality.

With the increase of population, the demand
for good sirup and sugar grew. This induced
better methods, and the result was less waste
and purer products. Sugar is seldom made now
in the open woods, and in nearly every sugar
bush is a small house or sugar shanty used in
each spring's sugar making.

The old ax cut was replaced by an auger
hole which did not injure the tree. At first this
was a large opening, made to hold the wooden
spout or "spile" then used. Gradually it was
made smaller, until now the small metal spouts
used fill holes only an inch deep and less than
half an inch in diameter. Wooden pails took the
place of bark dishes for catching the sap, and
they in turn have now given way to vessels of
galvanized iron. Years ago the men who went

By-Products of the Forest

from tree to tree gathering sap wore over their
shoulders wooden yokes for carrying two pails of
sap. Most farmers now have a wooden sledge in
the camp. Barrels are placed on this, and the
sledge is drawn from tree to tree by horses or
oxen.

In some camps iron kettles are still used, and
the sap is boiled down until thick enough for
good sirup, or will crystallize and make sugar.
The old way of finding this out was to dip into
the boiling sirup a small twig bent into a loop,
or to drop some of it on snow. If it formed a
little film over the loop, or made taffy on the
snow, it was taken from the fire and poured into
molds where it soon turned into sugar. About
four gallons of sap are needed to make a single
pound of sugar. Usually the sap runs for three
or four weeks, good trees giving as much as fif-
teen or twenty gallons of sap in that time.

In some of the larger groves the sap is now
brought to the camp by pipe lines running in
from the woods. In such groves the camp has
become a roomy house for sugar making. It is
kept with much cleanliness and care. In it the
old iron kettle is no longer found. Instead, a long,

The History of Maple Sugar 213

shallow pan over an iron fire box or arch is used.
The pan is only a few inches deep, but made so
that almost all of it is directly over the fire. The
sap enters from a large storage tank at the up-
per end of this tank or "evaporator," and par-
titions in the pan cause it to flow slowly from
side to side. The water in it rapidly evaporates.
It is sirup when it reaches the other end, and
is strained through flannel. Some of it may be
reboiled in a sugaring-off arch until it crystal-
lizes into sugar.

INTERIOR OF A MODERN MILL WHERE EVERY
PART OF THE TREE IS UTILIZED

TREES IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Perm's Treaty Tree

THERE are a few old trees in America which
are famous. They stand year after year, living
landmarks of some great event in the dim past.
The American people treasure them with care,
and it is right that they should do so.

The tree made famous by the treaty of Wil-
liam Penn with the red men was an elm. Penn
was always honest in his dealings with the In-
dians, although other white men were not. So
the red men loved Penn, calling him their

217

218 Trees in American History

"Great White Brother." In the fall of 1682 he
met many of them under this old tree. Here he
smoked the "pipe of peace" with them; and
here they made their treaty of friendship and
brotherly love.

The Treaty Tree was growing as a sapling as
early as 1540, when all the surrounding country
was forest. During the American Revolution
the tree still stood there as of old. In the winter
of 1778 the English and Tories were in posses-
sion of Philadelphia, where the tree stood. They
had captured the city from the American sol-
diers. It was very cold. Parties of British sol-
diers went out everywhere looking for wood,
but this old Treaty Tree they would not touch.
They spared the tree for the memories it held of
earlier days.

But in 1810 there came a great storm. The
tree had grown old and weak. It was blown
down, and then it was learned, by counting its
many rings, that Penn's tree had lived for more
than two hundred and eighty years.

The Charter Oak

FIVE of the American colonies — Connecticut,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and
Virginia — were settled under charter grants
made directly to the colonists by the king of
England. These charters set forth the rights and
liberties of the colonists, and so were worth a
great deal to them. Without their charters they
might be treated unfairly by the English king
across the seas.

In the year 1 686 the king appointed Sir Edmund

219

Trees in American History

Andros governor-general of all the New England
colonies. The new governor-general soon de-
manded their charters. The people of Connecti-
cut refused. A copy of their charter was made
in June, 1687, but the original document was
carefully guarded and kept under lock and key
at Hartford.

Since he was unable otherwise to secure that
which he had demanded, Andros finally decided
to go in person to Hartford and take the charter
in defiance of the people's wishes.

A session of the Colonial Assembly was being
held at the time in the meeting-house. Andros,
with a company of soldiers at his beck, appeared
before them and commanded them to deliver the
charter into his hands. For some time the repre-
sentatives of the colony discussed the matter with
him. The meeting was purposely prolonged
until twilight, or as people then said "early
candle light." Candles were then lighted, and
the charter was brought out. It was placed on a
table in the center of the room. There Andros
saw it for the first and last time.

As the governor put out his hand to seize the
precious document, all the candles in the meet-

The Charter Oak

ing-house were suddenly "snuffed out." Outside,
many people were waiting. They began to shout
loudly, and several entered the room where the
meeting was being held. Among them was
Captain Joseph Wadsworth, a brave and clever
man. In the darkness and confusion he picked
up the charter unseen, carried it away, and hid
it in the hollow trunk of an old oak in the out-
skirts of the town.

In the meeting-house the candles were pres-
ently lighted again, and all became quiet. Gov-
ernor Andros looked about him. There was no
charter to be seen. He demanded that it be given
up to him at once. But no one there could, or
would, tell of its hiding-place. The angry gover-
nor was finally obliged to leave without it.

Long before this, the same oak had been the
Peace Tree of the Suckiaug Indians. The acorn
was their sacred totem, and under this tree they
held their councils. At the foot of the tree their
war hatchets were buried. Under its branches
they smoked the pipe of peace.

This giant of the forest was fully twenty-five
feet in circumference. At the time of the charter
incident the hollow in its great trunk was large

Trees in American History

enough to hold a child. From the summer of 1687
to the spring of 1689 it safely kept the charter
of Connecticut. Eight years later the opening
closed completely. The Charter Oak lived on
from year to year, a sturdy relic of the past,
until, on the night of August twenty-second,
1856, there came a great storm, during which
the old tree was blown to the ground.

One night, my children, from the North

There came a furious blast.

At break of day I ventured forth

And near the cliff I pass'd.

The storm had fall'n on the Oak,

And struck him with a mighty stroke,

And whirl'd, and whirPd him far away.

Wordsworth.

The Boston Liberty Tree

IN the year 1765 there was a great deal of un-
rest in the colonies. The Americans complained
of being treated unfairly by the English. This
had been the case for a long, long time.

The English thought it fair to make the Ameri-
cans pay heavy taxes, as their ancestors had done
before they left England. But the Americans
were unwilling to pay taxes without receiving
any benefits thereby or being given any voice in
the government of the colonies. They protested
that "taxation without representation is unjust,
If we pay English taxes, we must have English
rights." But these the king of England refused
to grant to them.

Sometimes some of the Americans held meet-
ings. There the patriots came to talk over what
they might do to help themselves. At first they
did not think of rebellion. They wanted only
to be treated fairly and given their rights. But
justice was refused by England.

223

Trees in American History

In some places patriotic societies were organ-
ized. The members of one great and now fa-
mous society called themselves the "Sons of
Liberty." They were young and brave men who
lived in and near the city of Boston. They were
fearless, and were willing to risk even their lives
for liberty.

Finally came the Stamp Act of 1765. The
Stamp Act was a law fixing a tax upon checks,
receipts, and other commercial papers used by
the colonists. The Americans regarded it as only
another act of British injustice. That summer the
Sons of Liberty met many times, not in some
large building or hall, but under the spreading
branches of an elm tree. They called their tree
"Liberty Hall."

Not long after the Stamp Act was passed the
stamps themselves arrived from England. An-
drew Oliver, a Boston Tory, was named by
King George III, to sell them to the people. But
Oliver sold very few. Early on the morning of
August fourteenth, two effigies were hung upon
the Liberty Tree. Now an effigy is a likeness
or make-believe of something or some one that
is real, and these two effigies looked very much

The Boston Liberty Tree 225

like two men. One of them was made of wood
and straw and old clothing. This represented
Andrew Oliver, the stamp agent of the king.
The other effigy was in the form of a large boot,
with a devil's head and horns peeping from the
top. This boot stood for Lord Bute, an English
nobleman and a great favorite with King George.
The colonists did not like their king and they
did not care for Bute, his favorite, who was a
weak and unjust man.

There, on the tree, these effigies hung all day.
At night a great many colonists came out on the
streets of the city. They formed a parade, and
the effigies were cut down from the Liberty Tree.
Some of the paraders carried torchlights, others
the figures of Oliver and Lord Bute. And as they
marched, the patriots shouted "Liberty forever!
No taxation without our consent! And no
stamps!"

Six months later the law was repealed in
London. The American colonists had no more
English stamps. But the old tree, their cradle of
Liberty, did not have much longer to stand as a
reminder of those stirring times. English troops
held the city of Boston in the summer of 1775.

STORY OF THE FOREST - 15

226 Trees in American History

One of their first acts was to order the Liberty
Tree cut down. Americans loved it, but it was
hateful to the sight of the Englishmen.

The soldiers came with their axes. One of
them was so pleased with what his fellows were
about to do that he climbed to the very top of
the tree. The men below set joyfully to work.
Theirs was no easy task, for the tree was not a
small one. They had chopped for some time,
when suddenly the old tree shook. It swayed
from side to side, then toppled and fell, with the
British soldier in it.

The Washington Elm

LET us imagine ourselves in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, on the third of July, 1775. It
is nine o'clock in the morning, and the colonial
troops are drawn up on the Cambridge Common.

227

228 Trees in American History

The soldiers are all in line; they are waiting to
receive their new commander-in-chief, General
George Washington.

Soon Washington and all his officers appear.
He walks with them from his headquarters to
the great elm which now bears his name. They
halt under its broad canopy of shade. Under the
elm General Washington draws his sword, and
takes command of all the Continental Army. It
was a great day for America. Ever since, the
tree under which this ceremony took place has
been called the Washington Elm.

The tree was even then very old. It was older
by half a century than the welcome of the Indian
Chief Samoset to the white settlers, in 1621. To
this day it stands there, admired by all who come
from near and far to gaze upon it. Long life
to the Washington Elm, the valued relic and re-
minder of those Revolutionary days so long ago!

Eighty years have passed, and more,

Since under the brave old tree
Our fathers gathered in arms, and swore
They would follow the sign their banners bore,

And fight till the land was free.

Holmes.

The Sequoias of California

No tale of the forest is complete without some
account of the giant sequoias of California,
which are among the largest and oldest trees in
the world. The sequoias or big trees are relics
of another age. Long, long ago these giants of
the forest first began to grow. Centuries have
passed, but still they live, vigorous and mighty
as of old.

Many thousand years ago these aged trees

229

230 Trees in American History

grew all over the northern half of the earth. Se-
quoias turned to stone have been found in
Greenland. Greenland then was "green" indeed,
a lovely spot on the earth's surface. Now it is a
frozen waste; these stone trees alone remind us
of what it was like ages ago.

To-day, in the twentieth century, but a few
of these sequoias remain. Their home is on the
western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains,
in California, where they grow more than a
mile above the level of the sea.

These trees of wonderful age were first dis-
covered less than a hundred years ago. In 1841
an old hunter and explorer named John Bid well
was making a trip on foot through the mountain
woodlands of eastern California. One day he
came upon a group of monster trees. There were
at least a hundred of them standing together. He
had never seen trees half so large as these, and
when he returned to his home he told his friends
wonderful tales of the forest giants he had seen.

Those trees are now owned by the government
of the United States. They form what is known
as the Calaveras Grove. During the last few
years the government has bought several groves

The Sequoias of California 231

of these big trees. But into some of the groves
men had already gone and, with ax and saw, and
even gunpowder, destroyed many of the noble
old trees.

The sequoias are so lasting that, even when
fallen, they lie on the ground for hundreds of
years without a sign of decay. In California
there is one tree with a tunnel cut through the
center of its trunk. Stages drawn by six horses
pass through the tree every day. In years past,
settlers have made their homes in old sequoia
trees; hollowed out, the huge stumps must have
made very comfortable and fairly roomy houses
in which to live.

One old fire-scarred stump has over four
thousand rings on it — a ring for each year of
its life. And this tree was not killed by fire, but
cut down many years ago. Had it been left
alone, it would probably be alive to-day. The
trees now standing are between four and five
thousand years old, and no one knows how
much longer they will live if unharmed by man.
Some of them are nearly four hundred feet high.
Many of the big trees are between thirty and
forty feet thick. In shape they look like pyra-

Trees in American History

mids, broad at the base and sharp-pointed at the
top. The bark is cinnamon-red, and at least a
foot and a half thick. The sequoias are well
protected by Nature. Insects, fungous diseases,
and forest fires have no effect on these giants of
the forest.

The sequoias are more ancient than the Sphinx
or the Pyramids of Egypt; older by fifteen hun-
dred years than the ruins of King Solomon's
temple at Jerusalem; far older than Jerusalem
itself. They were already two thousand years
old ere Rome, the Eternal City, was begun; they
were living, growing trees fully three thousand
years before the beginning of the Christian era.

Oh! not upon that mossy trunk

Let the dire axe descend,
Nor wreck its canopy of shade,

So long the red man's friend, —
Nor to the cold, unpitying winds

Those bannered branches give, —
Smite down the forest, if ye will —

But let its monarch live!

Sigourney.

INDEX

Index

Acorns, 137.

Age of some trees, 40, 58, 229; how
to tell the age of trees, 46, 49; the
tree's life in age, 64, 68; five ages
of trees, 60.

American elm, 139.

Andros, Sir Edmund, and the Char-
ter Oak, 219.

Animals in the woods, 15, 24, 52, 84,
105.

Arbor Day, 100, 102.

Ash, seeds of the, 51.

Backwoods dining room, 160.

Balsam fir, the, 118, 119.

Bandsaws, a mill with, 27, 177.

Beauty of trees, the, 103.

Beech, the, 124; origin of name, 125.

Bible, 125.

Birch, canoe, 142; seeds of, 51.

Birds as planters of seeds, 52.

Bird's-eye maple, 153.

Bjornson, Bjornstjerne,quoted, 107.

Boston Liberty Tree, 223.

Bracket fungi, 77.

By-products of the forest, 179.

Cabin, log, of early settlers, 16-22;

of lumbermen, 158.
Calaveras Grove, 230.
California, big trees of, 40, 216, 229;

sugar pines of, 54.
Cambridge, Mass., the Washington

Elm at, 227.
Canker in trees, 78.

Canoe, birch bark, 142, 145; dug-
out, 149.

Caterpillars as enemies to trees, 80.

Cedar, the red, 121.

Charcoal and charcoal burners, 127,
187.

Charter Oak of Connecticut, 219.

Chestnut, the, 128; chestnut blight,
77, 129.

Chlorophyll, 44.

Chorley, Henry F., poem on "The
Oak" quoted, 138.

Christmas trees, 118, 119.

Circular saws, mill with, 28.

Coal, produced from forests, 70, 99.

Cones and conifers, 53, 108, 112,
115, 118, 124.

Conservation of forests, 33, 91.

Curly maple, 153.

Deserts, 104.
Diseases of trees, 75.
"Don'/.?" to be remembered, 87.
Dugout canoes, 149.

Economic value of forests, 29.

Elm, American, 139-141; Washing-
ton Elm, 227.

Enemies of trees, 72, 79, 82.

Evergreens, 59, 61, 108, 112, 115.
118, 121.,

Felling the trees, 163.
Fir, the balsam, 118.
Fireplace, the open, 22.

235

236

Index

Fires in the forest, 82.

Fire warden, 83.

Floods and the forest, 89.

Florida, a forest in, 57.

Food of trees, 66.

Forestry and foresters, 60.

Forests, of America, 11; in early
days, 13; in history, 29; of to-day,
34, 56; damaged by insects, 79,
81; destroyed by fires, 82; floods
and the forest, 89; economic
value, 29; conservation of, 33, 91.

Fungi, 75.

Furniture, 98.

Gum, spruce, 206.

Hardwoods, 124, 150.
Hauling the logs, 166.
Hemlock, the, 115, 186.
Hickory, the shagbark, 107, 131.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, quoted,

228.
House-raising in the new country,

17.
How to know the trees, 95; how

Nature plants, 50.

India rubber, 98.

Indians in the forests, 14, 24, 29,
114, 142, 144, 149, 171, 217, 221.
Insects injurious to trees, 79.
Irving, Washington, quoted, 138.

Jam, a log, 171.
Jamestown, Va., 25.

Leather tanned with bark, 193.
Log cabins, 16, 21, 157, 158.
Log drive, the, 169.
Loggers or lumberjacks, 156, 160.

Maple, seeds of the, 51 ; varieties of,
150; sugar, 151-154; curly, 153.

Michigan, forest fires in, 85.

Morris, George P., poem, "Wood-
man, spare that Tree," 99.

Mountain streams, 90.

Nebraska, schoolhouse in, 100, 101.
New Amsterdam, sawmills at, 25.
Nuts, gathering of, 107.

Oak, white, 135.
Oases, 104.

Palm trees of Florida, 56.

Paper from wood pulp, 117, 181.

Pencils, lead, 123.

Penn's treaty tree, 217.

Pines, how to tell age of, 48; of Cali-
fornia, 54; of New England, 58;
white pine, 108.

Pitsawing, 24.

Planting trees, 33; how nature
plants, 50, 52.

Poles, 62.

Poplar, the, 146, 148.

Prairies, the, 34.

Prehistoric forest, 70.

Products of the forest, 97; by-
products, 179.

"Pulp wood," 181.

Railroads and the forests, 30, 129.
Red cedar, 121; red spruce, Hi.
River drivers, 167.
Roads in the forests, 30, 105, 167.

Saplings and seedlings, 61.
Sawmills, the first, 23; modern, 28,

176, 178.
Seeds of trees, 50.

Index

237

Sequoias of California, 229.
Settlers, first white, 14, 17, 149.
Shagbark hickory, 131.
Shoes, wooden, 127; shoe pegs, 143.
Sigourney, Mrs., quoted, 232.
South America, trees in, 54, 98.
Spruce, the red, 112; spruce gum,

206.

Stamp Act, the. 224.
Standards, 65.
Storms and winds, 73.
Sugar maple, 151, 154; history of

maple sugar, 209-216.

Tanbark, 117, 193; a tannery, 196;
how leather is tanned, 193-198.

Tennyson, quoted, 68.

Trading posts in the forest, 24.

Tree, parts of, 41, 42; how it grows,
45; how it lives, 39; how it dies,
69; the tree in youth, 59; in old

age, 64; enemies, 72; in history.
15, 17, 24, 215.

Tulip tree, 146, 148.

Turpentine, 96; the turpentine or-
chard, 199-205.

Value of forests, 29, 31, 178.
Veterans, 66.

Washington Elm, 228.

"Wattap," 114.

Western woods, 173.

Whipsawing, 24.

White pine, 108; white oak, 135.

"White water man," 171.

Willows, 55, 104.

Wire worms as enemies of trees,

80.
"Woodman, spare that Tree,"

poem, 99.
Woodsmen, with the, 157.