ut a careful treatment of the forests with an eye to
their continuance, the plan of cutting large trees, and preserving
the small ones, is a very different thing from our present wasteful
methods.

Every summer the air is filled with the smoke of burning forests,
and the lumbermen are at work harder than ever felling virgin forests
upon more and more remote mountain slopes.

Books of travel written fifty years ago tell of animal life in
such abundance in many portions of the West that we can hardly
believe their stories. A description of California written in 1848
mentions elk, antelope, and deer as abundant in the Great Valley.
How many of us living at the present time have ever seen one of
these animals in its native haunts?

There is hope now that this wasteful use of Nature's gifts will
soon be stopped. Large areas of the mountainous portions of the
public domain are being set aside as parks and forest reserves.
The parks contain some of the finest scenery and most wonderful
natural curiosities to be found upon the face of the whole earth.
This wild scenery, together with the forests and plants of every
kind, as well as the animals and birds that inhabit these areas,
are to remain just as they were when the first white man looked
upon them.

The parks form asylums for the wild creatures which have been hard
pressed for so many years. In the Yellowstone National Park, where
they have been protected the longest, the animals have almost lost
their fear of man and act as if they knew that they are safe within
its limits. In the Yellowstone you may see great herds of elk feeding
in the rich meadows; deer stand by the roadside and watch you pass,
while the bears have become so tame about the hotels that they
make themselves a nuisance. Sixteen bears at a time have been seen
feeding at the garbage pile near the Grand Canon hotel.

The forest reserves differ from the parks in that they are established
for utility rather than for pleasure. The forests now existing
are to be cared for by the government and to be wisely used when
lumber is needed. Fires are to be avoided so far as possible, and
burned areas are to be replanted with trees. Another object to be
accomplished is the retention of the forests about the heads of
the streams so as to preserve the summer water supply. The water
runs off more slowly from a slope covered with vegetation than
from a barren one, and therefore has more time to soak into the
ground.