Page:A primer of forestry, with illustrations of the principal forest trees of Western Australia.djvu/13

 essential to a country's well-being as forests. A country may possess rich deposits of valuable metals and ores, but, when once these deposits have been exhausted, they can never be replaced. With forests the case is quite different. Provided they are not wantonly destroyed or recklessly used, the forests will continue to yield an annual crop of timber for all time and so remain forever a source of wealth to the community possessing them. There is no material more useful to man than timber, none that is more intimately connected with his well-being. Without it life would be shorn of most of its joys and comforts; without it man would never have emerged from barbarism; fire as a means of preparing" food and providing warmth would have been unknown, and travelling that included the crossing of the wide rivers or of seas would have been impossible, and man must for ever have remained a cave dweller.

But raw timber is by no means the only valuable product of the forest. There are quite a number of others, some obtainable direct and others after the raw material has been the object of certain processes. Timber itself may be converted into other substances. Under the process known as "destructive distillation" from wood there may be obtained pyroligneous acid, charcoal, gas and tar, and from these again, by further processes, wood alcohol (valuable as a fuel and for many other purposes) and quite a number of chemicals, all of them of commercial importance. The barks of certain of our trees are used by tanners for converting skins into leather, and the marri (redgum) yields in large quantities a kino or resin which is also of service in tanning. Again, from the leaves of almost every tree in our forests an oil may be obtained. Some trees yield very little oil, others a quantity large enough to form the basis of an industry. Eucalyptus oil, which everyone knows, is distilled from the leaves of a member of the eucalypt family, but this particular tree is not found m Western Australia. Then, again, the forests provide us with several gums and resins of value in certain trades—manna gum and blackboy gum are instances. For many years a great part of the paper used throughout the world has been made from wood. Hitherto the woods principally used for papermaking are the various softwoods found in Northern Europe, Canada and the United States. But the forests from which these woods have been drawn are daily becoming smaller, and it has been found necessary to discover whether hardwoods such as the eucalypts could not be used for the purpose. Experiments have been made and are still being made in Perth and elsewhere in Australia, and the results indicate that certain kinds of paper may be made from these trees. It will be seen, therefore, that, besides timber, forests yield many other substances of use and value to man. Writing of the significance of trees to mankind, an American author says, "Before the earth could be peopled it was set thick with trees. Trees are the arms of Mother Earth, lifted up in worship to the Maker; where they are beauty dwells: where they are not the land is ugly, though it is rich, for its richness is but grassy flatness and its gaudy raiment is but cheap imitation of forest finery."