The eating of nuts and fruits furnished by certain kinds of trees came as natural to early men as it does to the other animals. They shared with the birds the wild fruits, and divided with the squirrels the many kinds of nuts. So highly do the Italians still value the wild chestnut that this tree, almost alone of all the forest trees that once covered their country, has been saved.
The most important uses of trees in our country are for lumber, for fuel, and for the edible fruits and nuts which they bear. There are several purposes to which logs are put without being sawed into lumber, such as for telegraph poles and for piling for the support of great buildings and for wharves. Long ago nearly all our houses were made of logs. There was then an abundance of clear, straight trees but very few sawmills. It was easy to cut the logs, peel and notch them at the ends, and then lay them up in a house of just the size that was wanted. From the logs that split easily rough boards and shingles were made, as well as chairs and tables. Blocks of wood were set in the openings cut for windows, because of the scarcity of glass.
H. W. Fairbanks
A giant sugar pine in a National Forest in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Our forefathers had all the wood they wanted just for the cutting, and so they warmed their houses by means of fireplaces large enough to hold great logs. They made of wood every tool and household convenience for which this substance could be used. Indeed, they had more wood than they wanted. Trees covered so much of the land that the ground could not be cultivated until they had been cut away. Now we wish that we had the oak, hickory, black walnut, and other kinds of trees, that the pioneers of our country burned in order to get them out of the way, for they have become very valuable.
Now, partly because wood is becoming scarce, and partly because our large buildings must be made very strong and safe from fire, we are using other materials for them. Stone, brick, and concrete, when tied together with iron beams, are more suitable material for great buildings. Our land now contains so many people, and so many new homes are needed every year, that the lumber required for houses alone is almost more than we can believe.
The forests are now disappearing so fast that unless we use wood more carefully we may have to give up our attractive wooden homes and cheery fireplaces and live in houses of stone or concrete. In many parts of the world people have so completely destroyed the forests that they have not only to make their homes of mud bricks or stone, but have little wood left for fuel and other purposes.
We cannot mention all the purposes to which wood is put in our homes and in our industries. It would take a whole page in this book merely to make a list of them. What we ought to remember, however, is that it is not so much the amount of wood that we actually use as it is the wood that is wasted that is likely to bring us to want. Two thirds of the wood of the trees cut throughout our country is wasted in its manufacture into lumber and other objects. Besides this, as much wood is burned every year in needless forest fires as is cut by the lumberman. The waste of trees that are cut merely for their bark which is used in tanning leather is a wrong for which Nature will sometime call us to account.
In Switzerland, where the forests are given the care that we bestow upon a garden, not a particle of wood is allowed to go to waste. The branches are all picked up and saved. Even the sawdust is made use of in the manufacture of wood alcohol, which has an important use as fuel.