Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/132

122 It is difficult for us to comprehend our present yearly consumption of wood in all its varied uses. Conservative and accepted authorities place the present yearly lumber cut in this country at 40,000,000,000 feet (B. M.), while this is estimated to be but one-seventh of the total wood consumption. If it were possible to cut the entire amount yearly consumed into boards an inch thick, they would cover a walk six feet wide that would extend more than 354 times around the earth at its greatest diameter.

Although the amount of wood produced each year by the growth of the forests of the entire country is very great, it is a long way from what it might be both in quantity and quality were our forests adequately

protected and managed. It will certainly not be sufficient to supply our requirements, after the virgin timber is exhausted, without the organization of a system of management which will keep the lands assigned to forest growth properly protected and in a desirable condition as to reproduction and growth.

This is well illustrated in the present unsatisfactory condition of much of the woodland in the Eastern States that has been cut over at various times without consideration for a future crop and left without protection and to chance reproduction. In the oldest part of the Union, viz.: the original thirteen States, the latest report, based upon trustworthy figures, places the wooded area at a little over fifty-five per cent., yet without systematic forest management, how