Why Forestry is Necessarily a Nation Problem

Abstract

<p>Forestry is a vast subject. It is both broad and deep. It has to do with soil, climate, and topography. It affects both mountain and valley. It determines the course and volume of rivers. It influences physical and political geographic changes. It governs the prosperity and life of nations. The forest is only one of its incidents. One might spend the evening profitably with the single subject ''The Tree, '' or ''National Forests, Their Organization and Administration,'' or ''Forestry as it Affects the Lumber Industry", or "Forest Fires and How to Fight Them", or "1'he Uses of Wood and Its Substitutes", or "The Grove and Its Influences Upon the Home", or "The Forester as the Landscape Gardener of the Nation". Each one of these branches of the subject is interesting and profitable, but no one of them is vital. Two phases of the question are all important and are so closely associated that in many ways they are seen to be not only interdependent but co-extensive. These phases of the subject are (a) Why Forestry is necessarily a national problem, and (b) Forestry as the crowning physical manifestation of civilization,-one of the tests by which the Creator judges the progress of a people and their nation's :fitness for eternal life.</p>