ids freshets and floods. In the Alps of France
sheep grazing destroyed the mountain forests and, later on, the
grass which replaced the woods. Destructive floods resulted. It
has cost the French people many millions of dollars to repair the
damage done by the sheep.

The Federal Government does its best to keep foreign tree
diseases out of the United States. As soon as any serious disease
is discovered in foreign countries the Secretary of Agriculture
puts in force a quarantine against that country. No seed or tree
stock can be imported. Furthermore, all the new species of trees,
cuttings or plants introduced to this country are given thorough
examination and inspection by government experts at the ports
where the products are received from abroad. All diseased trees
are fumigated, or if found diseased, destroyed. In this manner
the Government protects our country against new diseases which
might come to our shores on foreign plants and tree stock.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GROWTH OF THE FORESTRY IDEA

Our forests of the New World were so abundant when the early
settlers landed on the Atlantic Coast that it was almost
impossible to find enough cleared land in one tract to make a
40-acre farm. These thick, dense timberlands extended westward to
the prairie country. It was but natural, therefore, that the
forest should be considered by these pioneers as an obstacle and
viewed as an enemy. Farms and settlements had to be hewed out of
the timberlands, and the forests seemed inexhaustible.

Experts say that the original, virgin forests of the United
States covered approximately 822,000,000 acres. They are now
shrunk to one-sixth of that area. At one time they were the
richest forests in the world. Today there are millions of acres
which contain neither timber nor young growth. Considerable can
be restored if the essential measures are started on a national
scale. Such measures would insure an adequate lumber supply for
all time to come.

Rules and regulations concerning the cutting of lumber and the
misuse of forests were suggested as early as the seventeenth
century. Plymouth Colony in 1626 passed an ordinance prohibiting
the cutting of timber from the Colony lands without official
consent. This is said to be the first conservation law passed in
America. William Penn was one of the early champions of the
"Woodman, spare that tree" slogan. He ordered his colonists to
leave one acre of forest for every five acres o