of the mill to-morrow. There's a lot of
spruce here, and it ought to pay."

"But I thought," said Wilbur, "that paper-pulp was such a destructive
way of using timber?"

"It is," answered Merritt, "but paper is a necessity. A book is more
important than a board."

"But doesn't it take a lot of wood to make a little paper?" asked the
boy. "There's been such a howl about paper-pulp that I thought it must
be fearfully wasteful."

"It isn't wasteful at all," was the reply. "A cord and a half of spruce
will make a ton of pulp. Where the outcry comes in is the quantity used.
One newspaper uses a hundred and fifty tons of paper a day. That means
two hundred and twenty-five cords of wood. The stand of spruce here is
about ten cords to the acre. So one newspaper would clean off ten acres
a day or three thousand acres a year."

"But wouldn't it ruin the forest to take it off at that rate?"

"Certainly," the Supervisor answered, "but the sale will be so arranged
that not more will be sold each year than will be good for the forest."

"Is all paper made of spruce?" asked Wilbur.

"No. Many kinds of wood will make paper. Carolina poplar and tulip wood
are both satisfactory."

"Except for the branches and knot-wood," said Wilbur, "almost every part
of every kind of tree is good for something."

"And you can use those, too," came the instant reply. "That's what dry
distillation is for. All that you've got to do is fill a retort with
wood and put a furnace under it, and all pine tree leavings can be
transformed into tar and acetic acid, from which they can make vinegar,
as well as wood alcohol and charcoal."

Finding that the boy was thoroughly interested in the possibilities of
lumber, the Supervisor, usually so silent and brief in manner, opened
out a little and talked for two straight hours to Wilbur on the
possibilities of forestry. He showed the value of turpentine and resin
in the pine trees and advocated the planting of hemlock trees and oak
trees for their bark, as used in the tanning industry.

As the Forester warmed up to his subject, Wilbur thought he was
listening to an "Arabian Nights" fairy tale. Despite his customary
silence Merritt was an enthusiast, and believed that forestry was the
"chief end of man." He assured the boy that twenty different species of
tree of immense value could be acclimatized in North America which are
of great commercial value now in South America; he compared the climate
in the va