largely by the Adirondack and Catskill forests. Should these forests be destroyed, it is not impossible that the frequent freshets which would follow would so fill the Hudson River with silt and

debris that the ship channels in the bay, already costing the government millions of dollars a year to keep dredged, would become too shallow for ships. If this should occur, the greatest city in this country would soon lose its place and become of second-rate importance. The story of how this very thing happened to the old Greek city of Poseidonia is graphically told in the following lines:

Erosion at Sayre, Penn., by the Chemung River.

Photograph by W. C. Barbour.

"It was such a strange, tremendous story, that of the Greek Poseidonia, later the Roman Pæstum. Long ago those adventuring mariners from Greece had seized the fertile plain which at that time was covered with forests of great oak and watered by two clear and shining rivers. They drove the Italian natives back into the distant hills, for the white man's burden even then included the taking of all the desirable things that were being wasted by incompetent natives, and they brought over colonists whom the philosophers and moralists at home maligned, no doubt, in the same pleasant fashion of our own day. And the colonists cut down the oaks, and plowed the land, and built cities, and made harbors, and finally dusted their busy hands and busy souls of the grime of labor and wrought splendid temples in honor of the benign gods who had given them the possessions of the Italians and filled them with power and fat

ness.

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'Every once in so often the natives looked lustfully down from the hills upon this fatness, made an armed snatch at it, were driven back with bloody contumely, and the heaping of riches upon riches went on. And more and more the oaks were cut down mark that! for the stories of nations are so inextricably bound up with the stories of trees - until all the plain was cleared and tilled; and then the foothills were denuded, and the wave of destruction crept up the mountain sides, and they, too, were left naked to the sun and the rains.

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'At first these rains, sweeping down torrentially, unhindered by the lost forests, only enriched the plain with the long-hoarded sweetness of the trees; but by and by the living rivers grew heavy and thick, vomiting mud into the ever shallowing harbors, and the land soured with the undrained stagnant water. Commerce turned more and more to deeper ports, and mosquitoes began to breed in the brackish soil that was making fast between the city and the sea.

"Who of all those powerful landowners and rich merchants could ever have dreamed that little buzzing insects could sting a great city to death? But they did. Fevers grew more and more prevalent. The malariahaunted population went more and more languidly about their business. The natives, hardy and vigorous in the hills, were but feebly repulsed. Carthage demanded tribute, and Rome took it, and changed the city's name from Poseidonia to Pæstum. After Rome grew weak, Saracen corsairs came in by sea and grasped the slackly defended riches, and the little winged poisoners of the night struck again and again, until grass grew in the streets, and the wharves crumbled where they stood. Finally, the wretched remnant of a great people wandered away into the more wholesome hills, the marshes rotted in the heat and grew up in coarse reeds where corn and vine had flourished, and the city melted back into the wasted earth."

Elizabeth Bisland and Anne Hoyt, Seekers in Sicily. John Lane Company.

Prevention of Erosion by Covering of Organic Soil. We have shown how ungoverned streams might dig out soil and carry it far from its original source. Examples of what streams have done may be seen in the deltas formed at the mouths of great rivers. The forest prevents this by holding the water supply and letting it out gradually. This it does by covering the inorganic soil with humus or decayed organic material. In this way the forest floor becomes like a sponge, holding water through long periods of drought. The roots of the trees, too, help hold the soil in place. The gradual evaporation of water through the stomata of the leaves cools the atmosphere, and this tends to precipitate the moisture in the air. Eventually the dead bodies of the trees themselves are added to the organic covering, and new trees take their place.

Other Uses of the Forest. In some localities forests are used as windbreaks and to protect mountain towns against avalanches. In winter they moderate the cold, and in summer reduce the heat and lessen the danger from storms. The nesting of birds in woods protects many plants valuable to man which otherwise might be destroyed by insects.

Forests have great commercial importance as well.

Even in this day of coal, wood is still by far the most-used fuel. It is useful in building. It outlasts iron under water, in addition to being durable and light. It is cheap and, with care of the forests, inexhaustible, while our mineral wealth will some day be used up. Hard woods are chiefly used in house building and furniture manufacture; the soft woods, reduced to pulp, are made into paper. Distilled wood gives alcohol. Partially burned wood is charcoal. acids are obtained from trees, as are tar, creosote, resin, turpentine, and other useful oils. The making of maple sirup and sugar forms a profitable industry in several states.

Vinegar and other

The Forest Regions of the United States. The combined area of all the forests in the United States, exclusive of Alaska, is about 500,000,000 acres. This seemingly immense area is rapidly decreasing in acreage and in quality, thanks to the demands of an increasing population, a woeful ignorance on the part of the owners of the land, and wastefulness on the part of cutters and users alike. A glance at the map shows the distribution of our principal forests. The following figures taken from the United States Census reports tell their own tale. In 1908, 31,231 sawmills cut

33,289,369,000 feet of lumber. They also cut over 12 billion shingles and nearly 30 billion laths. Nobody can tell how much lumber was wasted, either in the forest or at the mill. The census estimates, moreover, that owing to conditions caused by the panic, the amount cut was very considerably under that cut in 1907. Washington ranks first in the production of lumber. Here the great Douglas fir, one of the "evergreens," forms the chief source of supply. In the Southern states, especially Louisiana and Mississippi, yellow pine and cypress are the trees most lumbered.

Uses of Wood.

In our forests much of the soft wood (the conebearing trees, spruce, balsam, hemlock, and pine), and poplars, aspens, basswood, with

some other species, make paper pulp. The daily newspaper and cheap books are responsible for inroads on our forests which cannot well be repaired. It is not necessary to take the largest trees to make pulp wood. Hence many young trees of not more than six inches in diameter are sacrificed. Of the hundreds of species of trees in our forests, the conifers are probably most sought after for lumber. Pine, especially, is probably used more extensively than any other wood. It is used in all heavy construction work, frames of houses, bridges, masts, spars and timber of ships, floors, railway ties, and many other purposes. Cedar is used for shingles, cabinetwork, lead pencils, etc.; hemlock and spruce for heavy timbers and, as we have seen, for paper pulp. Another use for our lumber, especially odds and ends of all kinds, is in the packing-box industry. It is estimated that nearly 50 per cent of all lumber cut ultimately finds its way into the construction of boxes. Hemlock bark is used for tanning.

Transportation of lumber in the West. A logging train.

The hard woods, ash, basswood, beech, birch, cherry, chestnut, elm, maple, oak, and walnut, are used largely for the "trim" of

our houses, for manufacture of furniture, wagon or car work, and endless other purposes.

Structure of Wood. Quite a difference in color and structure is often seen between the heartwood, composed of the dead walls of cells occupying the central part of the tree trunk, and the sapwood, the living part of the stem. In trees which are cut down for use as lumber and in the manufacture of various furniture, the markings and differences in color are not always easy to understand.

a

b

с

Diagrams of sections of timber: a, cross section; b, radial; c, tangential. (From Pinchot, U.S. Dept. of Agr.)

A

Methods of cutting Timber. glance at the diagram of the sections of timber show us that a tree may be cut radially through the middle of the trunk or tangentially to the middle portion. Most lumber is cut tangentially. Hence the yearly rings take a more or less irregular course. The grain of wood is caused by the