It is hardly possible for a boy to select and purchase wood for his
various purposes without some knowledge of the different woods and
their peculiar characteristics. No two are exactly alike, and in fact
two trees of the same kind growing in different parts of the country
under different conditions will produce timber of very different
qualities. This is specially noticeable in the tulip or white wood, for
example. A tree of this species, growing in a swamp in the South, will
yield a very different wood from one grown on high ground in the North.
Again, the same wood is known in different localities by different
names, so in order to have a sound knowledge of lumber, it is really
necessary to know something about the trees. White wood, just
mentioned, is called, in many localities, yellow poplar. As a matter
of fact, it is not a poplar, nor is it related to the poplars, being a
member of the magnolia family.
The following pages, devoted to this subject, are the cream of many
talks between our boys, boiled down to the important facts and
arranged in some order. It was a hobby of Ralph's, and Harry became so
enthusiastic over it that they frequently laid aside their work and
took long walks through the country studying trees.
Harry started a small nursery in the garden and is raising young
trees from seeds and cuttings. As he remarked to Ralph one day: "It's
astonishing how little people know about trees! Why they are the most
interesting things that grow. Just think how many things we get from
them besides wood; maple sugar, rubber, turpentine, wood alcohol,
tannin for making leather, shellac, Canada balsam, spruce gum, and
nuts! All of our nuts except peanuts come from trees--hickory, walnuts,
butternuts, beechnuts, chestnuts, pecans, almonds, etc."
Ralph noticed that as Harry's interest in the trees grew he became less
wasteful of his wood in the shop. The fact that a tree had to be cut,
and in most cases killed, in order to furnish him with lumber, seemed
to worry him. One day when he was thoughtfully at work in the shop, he
blurted out, "It's a shame that so many trees have to be cut down for
lumber!"
"Yes," said Ralph, "it seems so; yet if no lumber was wasted, it would
not be so bad. It is estimated that 75 per cent. of the wood cut down
is wasted."
"How?" asked the boy.
"Well, in the first place, many lumbermen after cutting the tree
down, take just the log or lower part and leave the top to decay. It
often happens that they leave the tops and branches as a great mass
of litter, which soon becomes as dry as tinder, an invitation to the
smallest spark to start a fire, and more woodland is destroyed by fire
each year than I care to tell you."
"How much?" asked Harry.
"Every year, between twelve and fifteen million acres, and some years
three times as much."
"How much is a million acres?"
"You can get some idea from this: Long Island, N. Y., is a hundred
miles long and about twenty across in the widest part. It contains
about a million acres. Imagine this covered by solid woods, multiply by
fifteen and you would have a good idea of the amount of woodland burned
over every year."
"Gracious!" exclaimed the boy. "I should think every tree would have
been burned years ago."
"Well, this is a big country," said Ralph. "I figured it out once.
The United States is large enough to make six hundred states the size
of Connecticut, and have room for twenty-five or thirty more. The
state of Texas alone could be cut up into a hundred pieces as large as
Connecticut.
"The forest fire is one of our worst enemies. It is far worse than the
lumberman, because when he cuts down trees it gives hundreds of young
seedlings which are struggling to live in the shade a chance to grow
and cover the ground with a new forest; but the fire kills these young
seedlings and even burns the seeds that are lying in the leaves waiting
to grow. That is one of the worst things to be said against the forest
fire."
"Does it kill every tree?"
"Oh, no! Trees like the oak sprout from the old roots, but most
evergreen trees are killed outright."
"What happens then?"
"Why, it depends. If the forest is mixed, hard woods and conifers, the
hard woods, or some of them, will in time send up sprouts, and where
you formerly had a mixed stand, you will in a few years have only hard
woods, unless some of the evergreens were not touched. In that case,
their seeds will in time replace the old evergreens."
"How long does it take?"
"From forty to a hundred years to have a large forest. Some evergreens,
like the spruce, increase in diameter very slowly."
"What happens when the forest that is burned is all evergreens, and
they are all killed?" asked the irrepressible boy.
"The process of reforesting in that case is very slow. Trees of little
value, like the poplar or birch, appear first, because their seeds are
light and are carried a considerable distance by the wind. If fires
pass over the same area every few years, the forest will never come
back unless seeds are planted. There are large areas in this country
thus denuded, and instead of a forest we have a scrubby growth of
bushes that are of little value to anybody.
"Huckleberries grow in burned-over land luxuriantly, and in some
sections it is suspected that the people who make money by gathering
the berries burn the brush purposely.
"The forest cover is valuable for other things besides timber. The snow
melts slowly in an evergreen forest, because the rays of the sun cannot
penetrate with full strength. This allows the water to sink into the
ground slowly, and to come out lower down in the form of springs.
"Where there is no forest the snow melts much more quickly, the water
rushes down the hills in streams, carrying with it the top soil, which
is of so much value to the farmer, cutting the hillsides into gullies,
causing floods in the valleys, and filling up the rivers with silt or
mud.
"This spoils the streams, ruins the land, and causes millions of
dollars' worth of damage to property. If you doubt it, read the
newspaper accounts of floods in the valleys of the Ohio, Missouri, and
Mississippi every spring."
"But I should think by this time all the soil would be washed away."
"It will be in time. There are large areas in China where the soil
is washed away to the bare rock. The population has been obliged to
emigrate because when the soil goes, the population can no longer live."
"Well, what are we going to do about it?" asked Harry in amazement.
"Wait a minute," said Ralph, warming up to his subject. "The
Mississippi carries into the Gulf of Mexico every year seven and a half
billion cubic feet of soil; enough to cover Long Island two inches deep
every year."
"What are we going to do?" repeated the boy.
"We can do one of two things," said Ralph sagely, "We can follow in
the footsteps of China and let the land go to ruin; or we can follow
the example of Germany, take care of our forests--or what is left of
them--and plant new ones. It is one of the greatest questions in this
country to-day, and you are going to hear a lot about it before you are
twenty-one."