d fragments of the trunks lie scattered about, while above the ruin
rise those trees not considered worth cutting. The once beautiful and
majestic forest is now ready for fire. Some passer-by may drop a
lighted match or cigarette, and you can easily form a picture in your
mind of what happens.

[Illustration: _H. W. Fairbanks_
The shake maker wastes the larger part of a great sugar pine that has
been a thousand years in growing.]

In the countries of Europe lumbermen are very careful; not a particle of
the cut tree goes to waste. The logs are sawed without removing what we
call "slabs." The sawdust is saved and used in the manufacture of wood
alcohol. If we saved all the present waste in the logging and milling of
our pines, we could make all the turpentine needed in our country. If we
saved what is now wasted of the poplar and spruce, we should have
material enough to make all the paper we use.

There are still large and valuable forests in the Southern Appalachian
Mountains, in the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada-Cascade Range, and
the Coast Ranges. These regions were settled later than the Eastern
states, and parts of them are yet remote from markets.

Our wise lumbermen are beginning to understand that it is better to cut
over the forest carefully, so that by and by there will be another crop.
Nature is doing all she can to keep up the supply of trees, and, if we
give her half a chance, there will be timber enough both for us and for
those that come after us. The forest crop is like any other crop, except
that it cannot be cut every year.

Every one should understand that he has an interest in the forest.
Although he may not own a foot of land, yet his prosperity depends in
part on how the forests are managed.

If the forests are not taken care of, there will sometime be a wood
famine. If the mountain slopes are stripped of their trees, the streams
will no longer run clear and the low streams in summer will lead to a
water famine, which in turn might easily cause a bread famine.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

HOW THE FORESTS SUFFER FROM FIRES

He who wantonly kills a tree,
All in a night of God-sent dream,
He shall travel a desert waste
Of pitiless glare, and never a stream,
Nor a blade of grass, nor an inch of shade--
All in a wilderness he has made.
O, forlorn without trees!

He who tenderly saves a tree,
All in a night of God-sent dream,
He shall list to a hermit thrush
D