FORESTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. The purpose of forestry is to secure the perpetuation and at the same time the full use and benefit of the forest. Forestry seeks to serve the people by making the highest and most profitable use of large areas of land not well suited to agriculture, by conserving the water supply, and by fostering the economical production of wood commodities. The direct benefits to be secured from the practice of for estry are chiefly, a continuous supply of wood for all its various uses and the even distribution of the water supply through protection of the watersheds. Conditions peculiar to the western part of the United States have made it neces sary for government forest work to deal also with a very important use of the forest not di rectly pertaining to forestry, namely, the graz ing_of livestock on the national forests.
Forest problems of forestry and the methods employed in solving them are to a large extent determined by the nature, lo cation, and extent of the forests themselves. The forests of the United States cover approxi mately 550,000,000 acres, or about 20 per cent of the total land surface. There are five great forest regions, three stretching from the At lantic seaboard to the Great Plains, which are destitute of timber except along the margins of the streams and on occasional elevations, and two west of the Great Plains. (a) The Northern Pine Forest extends from western Minnesota eastward to the Atlantic Ocean and from Canada southward to northern Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and New Jersey. From northern Ohio and New Jersey there is a gradually nar rowing extension along the ridges of the Appa lachian Mountains, taking in nearly all of Penn sylvania and West Virginia, western Maryland and western Virginia, and reaching as far south as northern Georgia. The characteristic-tree of this forest is the white pine (Pinus strobus, Linn.).
White pine is a tree of the first commercial importance; and of all the trees of North America, it best combines the qualities of utility, rapid growth, heavy yield, and ease of management. Its former abundance and the cheapness and varied usefulness of its lum ber made it an important factor in the de velopment of the States in which it grows. After an enormous exploitation the original forests are now approaching exhaustion. The most rapid reduction has taken place in its western and more important centre of distri bution; but the greatest bodies of white pine in the country are still to be found in the north ern portion of the Lake States. The cut of white pine reached its maximum in 1890, when the production in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota amounted to 8,597,623,000 board feet. In 1900 the cut in these States had fallen to 5,419,333,000. In 1913, the total cut of white pine in the United States was 2,568,636,000 board feet. The reduction in cut has been ac companied by a marked fall in the quality of the lumber; and the large-size, high-grade white pine lumber, once abundant on the market, has become scarce and expensive. The demand for low-grade white pine lumber has made it pos sible, from a business standpoint, to cut and market second-growth timber when compara tively small and young. For many years the pineoutput of the northeastern States has consisted almost wholly of second growth. Had fires not been allowed to run repeatedly over the slash left in logging the original stand, a large part of northern Michigan and other noted white pine regions would probably now be covered with second growth, much of it of merchantable value.
Since the partial destruction of white pine in the eastern States, red spruce (Picea rubens, Sarg.) has become the principal commercial tree of this region. It grows usually in mix ture with hardwoods, such as beech, birch, and maple. At high altitudes, however, there occur comparatively pure red spruce and balsam fir stands. The amount of spruce lumber sawed in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massa chusetts, New York, and West Virginia in 1914 was 781,292,000 board feet, a large proportion of which was red spruce. Spruce is now cut principally for paper pulp; and the production of spruce pulpwood in the United States in 1911 amounted to 1,612,355 cords. This in cludes all the other varieties of spruce as well as red spruce. The cut of balsam fir lumber in the United States in 1914 was 125,212,000 board feet, more than half of the total being produced in Maine. Balsam fir has nearly always been cut to• some extent along with spruce for pulpwood; and in 1911, the consump tion of 191,779 cords of balsam fir pulpwood was reported. (b) The Southern Pine Forest
has its northern extremity in southern New Jersey and thence widens out southward and westward until it reaches the Gulf of Mexico and the open country in Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. Its principal trees are longleaf pine (Pinus palustrss, Mill), shortleaf pine (Punts echinata, Mill), loblolly pine (Pinus Ueda, Linn.), and bald cypress (Ta.rodium distichum, Linn.). The hardwoods of this region are chiefly the oaks, hickories, and gums. Long leaf pine is especially valuable as structural timber, and for this purpose is one of the most important trees in the world. The southern pines (known collectively in the lumber trade as southern yellow pine) supply a large pro portion of the lumber cut of the United States. Out of a total of 37,346,023,000 board feet in 1914, southern yellow pine supplied 14,472, 804,000 board feet. The southern pines, espe cially longleaf, also supply a large amount of turpentine and resin. In 1909 the value of these products amounted to $25,295,017. The bald cypress is a swamp tree of great commercial importance, especially for purposes requiring clear, durable, and easily worked lumber. The cut of cypress in 1914 was 1,013,013,000 board feet. (c) The Central Hardwood Forest occu pies the territory between the southern and northern pine forests and stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the treeless plains west of the Mississippi River. It is the only region in the United States in which the hardwoods pre dominate over the conifers. The principal trees are the oaks, hickories, ashes, chestnut, and yellow poplar. Many hardwoods are also to be found in the northern and southern pine forests, and much hardwood lumber is produced in the pine regions. The Central Hard wood Forest does not differ greatly in com position from the neighboring pine forests ex cept in the comparative absence of the conifers. The hardwood lumber cut in the United States in 1914 was as follows: Oak, 3,278.908,000; ma ple, 909,743,000; red gum, 675 380,000; chestnut, 540,591,000; yellow poplar. 519,221,000; birch, 430,667,000; beech, 376,464,000; basswood, 264, 656,000; elm, 214,294,000; cottonwood, 195, 198,000; ash, 189,499,000; tupelo, 124,480,000; hickory, 116,113,000; walnut, 25573,000; syca more, 22,773,000. (d) The Rocky Mountain Forest extends along, the Rocky Mountains from Idaho and Montana through Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado to Arizona and New Mexico. It is sub-arid in character and occu pies more or less isolated mountain masses, separated from each other by grazing lands, deserts, or cultivable valleys, and from the Pa cific Coast forest by desert areas. This forest is almost entirely coniferous, the principal species being western yellow pine (Pinus pon derosa, Laws.), Engelmann spruce (Picea engel manni, Engelm.), lodgepole pine (Pinus con torta, Loud.), and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga taxi/olia, Lam. Brit.). In 1914 the lumber cut of western yellow pine was 1,327,365,000 hoard feet; and the cut of lodgepole pine, 18, 374,000 board feet. On account of the semi-arid character of the region, this forest is of great value as a conserver of water; for all the vast irrigation projects situated nearby depend for their success upon the flow of water from the forested slopes of the mountains. It is in this forest that the summer range for grazing live stock is most important, the whole stock rais ing industry of the region depending largely for its summer feed on the ranges near or within the forests. (e) The Pacific Coast Forest occupies Washington, Oregon, and the northern half of California. The merchantable species are, with slight exception, conifers. The forest is characterized by the large size of the trees and the tremendous masses of timber it contains. The chief species are Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga taxifolia, Lam. Brit.), bigtree (Sequoia washingtoniana, Winsl. Sud.), sugar pine (Pinta lambertiana, Dougl.), western yel low pine (Pinus ponderosa, Laws.), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla, Raf. Sarg.), giant plicata, Don.), and Sitka spruce (Picea sttchensis, Bong., Trautv. and Mayer). The forest of the California Sierras, characterized by the bigtree, the sugar pine, and numerous magnificent firs, is one of the most beautiful in the world. In 1914 the total lumber cut of Douglas fir was 4,763, 693,000 board feet; of redwood, 535,199,000 feet; and of sugar pine, 136,159000 feet.