The ancients told many wonderful legends concerning the tree, and claimed for it numerous extraordinary qualities. Modern experience is finding some of these legends to be almost literal truth, and increasing knowledge of the tree shows that it has many of those high qualities for which it was anciently revered. Though people no longer think of it as the Tree of Life, they are beginning to realize that the tree is what enables our race to make a living and to live comfortably and hopefully upon this beautiful world.

Camping among forests quickly gives one a home feeling for them and develops an appreciation of their value. How different American history might have been had Columbus discovered a treeless land! The American forests have largely contributed to the development of the country. The first settlers on the Atlantic coast felled and used the waiting trees for home-[Pg 124]building; they also used wood for fuel, furniture, and fortifications. When trading-posts were established in the wilderness the axe was as essential as the gun. From Atlantic to Pacific the pioneers built their cabins of wood. As the country developed, wood continued to be indispensable; it was used in almost every industry, and to-day it has a more general use than ever.
SPANISH MOSS AT LAKE CHARLES, LOUISIANA SPANISH MOSS AT LAKE CHARLES, LOUISIANA

Forests enrich us in many ways. One of these is through the supply of wood which they produce,—which they annually produce. Wood is one of the most useful materials used by man. Wood is the home-making material. It gives good cheer to a million hearthstones. How extensively it is used for tools, furniture, and vehicles, for mine timbers and railroad development! The living influences which forests exert, the environments which they create and maintain, are potent to enable man best to manage and control the earth, the air, and the water, so that these will give him the greatest service and do him the least damage.

Forests are water-distributors, and everywhere their presence tends to prevent both [Pg 125] floods and extreme low water; they check evaporation and assist drainage; they create soil; they resist sudden changes of temperature; they break and temper the winds; they do sanitary work by taking impurities from the air; they shelter and furnish homes for millions of birds which destroy enormous numbers of weed-seed and injurious insects. Lastly, and possibly most important, forests make this earth comfortable and beautiful. Next to the soil, they are the most useful and helpful of Nature\'s agencies.

Forests are moderators of climate. They heat and cool slowly. Their slow response to change resists sudden changes, and, consequently, they mitigate the rudeness with which sudden changes are always accompanied. Sudden changes of temperature are often annoying and enervating to man, and frequently do severe damage to domestic plants and animals. They sometimes have what may be called an explosive effect upon the life-tissues of many plants and animals which man has domesticated and is producing for his benefit. Many plants have been domesticated and largely so specialized that they have[Pg 126] been rendered less hardy. With good care, these plants are heavy producers, but, to have from them a premium harvest each year, they need the genial clime, the stimulating shelter, and the constant protection which only forests can supply. Closely allied to changes of temperature is the movement of the air. In the sea every peninsula is a breakwater: on land every grove is a windbreak. The effect of the violence of high winds on fruited orchards and fields of golden grain may be compared to the beatings of innumerable clubs. Hot waves and cold waves come like withering breaths of flame and frost to trees and plants. High winds may be mastered by the forest. The forest will make even the Storm King calm, and it will also soften, temper, and subdue the hottest or the coldest waves that blow. Forests may be placed so as to make every field a harbor.

The air is an invisible blotter that is constantly absorbing moisture. Its capacity to evaporate and absorb increases with rapidity of movement. Roughly, six times as much water is evaporated from a place that is swept[Pg 127] by a twenty-five-mile wind as from a place in the dead calm of the forest. The quantity of water evaporated within a forest or in its shelter is many times less than is evaporated from the soil in an exposed situation. This shelter and the consequent decreased evaporation may save a crop in a dry season. During seasons of scanty rainfall the crops often fail, probably not because sufficient water has not fallen, but because the thirsty winds have drawn from the soil so much moisture that the water-table in the soil is lowered below the reach of the roots of the growing plants.

In the arid West the extra-dry winds are insatiable. In many localities their annual capacity to absorb water is greater than the annual precipitation of water. In "dry-farming" localities, the central idea is to save all the water that Nature supplies, to prevent the moisture from evaporating, to protect it from the robber winds. Forests greatly check evaporation, and Professor L. G. Carpenter, the celebrated irrigation engineer, says that forests are absolutely necessary for the interests of irrigated agricul[Pg 128]ture. Considering the many influences of the forest that are beneficial to agriculture, it would seem as though ideal forest environments would be the best annual assurance that the crops of the field would not fail and that the soil would most generously respond to the seed-sower.

So well is man served in the distribution of the waters and the management of their movements by the forests, that forests seem almost to think. The forest is an eternal mediator between winds and gravity in their never-ending struggle for the possession of the waters. The forest seems to try to take the intermittent and ever-varying rainfall and send the collected waters in slow and steady stream back to the sea. It has marked success, and one may say it is only to the extent the forest succeeds in doing this that the waters become helpful to man. Possibly they may need assistance in this work. Anyway, so great is the evaporation on the mountains of the West that John Muir says, "Cut down the groves and the streams will vanish." Many investigators assert that only thirty per cent of the rainfall is returned by the rivers[Pg 129] to the sea. Evaporation—winds—probably carry away the greater portion of the remainder. Afforestation has created springs and streams, not by increasing rainfall, although the forests may ............