THE GROWTH OF THE FORESTRY IDEA Our forests of the New World were so abundant when the early settlers landed on the Atlantic Coast that it was almost impossible to find enough cleared land in one tract to make a 40-acre farm.

These thick, dense timberlands extended westward to the prairie country.

It was but natural, therefore, that the forest should be considered by these pioneers as an obstacle and viewed as an enemy.

Farms and settlements had to be hewed out of the timberlands, and the forests seemed inexhaustible.
Experts say that the original, virgin forests of the United States covered approximately 822,000,000 acres.

They are now shrunk to one-sixth of that area.