Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/133

Rh utterly inadequate this comparatively large area is to provide those States with their present wood requirements, more particularly timber of desirable dimensions for first-class lumber.

As one would naturally expect from the great variations in climate and topography, there are marked differences in the reservations in the quality and quantity of timber per acre. Indeed, such reservations as the San Jacinto and San Gabriel in Southern California, reserved primarily for the protection which they afford the adjacent cultivated lands, bear merchantable timber, but on a small percentage of their total area.

The large part of the vegetation is brush or chaparral, either mixed

with a scattered stand of single trees or wholly composed of shrubby plants. It should hardly be dignified by the term forest.

From these Southwestern reservations of the arid and semi-arid regions, with little timber of commercial importance, to the rich stands of splendid timber, covering large areas of the Washington and Mount Ranier reservations in the State of Washington, our thirty-nine reservations show all variations in the density of their forests. On the whole, however, but few of them have a large percentage of their total area covered with first-class commercial trees. In some instances the altitude is too great for the growth of desirable timber, while in others the lack of moisture will not permit its growth at low elevations. It is in the intermediate zones that tree growth is at its best.