Identifier: storyofourcontin1893shal (find matches)
Title: The story of our continent : a reader in the geography and geology of North America : for the use of schools
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate, 1841-1906
Subjects: Physical geography Geology
Publisher: Boston : Ginn & Co.
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: LYRASIS members and Sloan Foundation

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e of the greatest trees of theworld, being only exceeded in height by some of theeucalyptus trees of Australia. In average girth theyprobably surpass any other giants of the forest. Thismagnificent species is now nearly extinct, the woods inwhich it occurs occupying in all only a few square milesof area. Another species, the redwood, a kind of fir,forms enormous forests, doubtless the noblest woods ofconiferous trees now existing on the surface of theearth. Between the eastern margin of the Pacific forest andthe western border of the Appalachian timbered coun-try, occupying in general the western half of the Missis-sippi Valley, and much of the Cordilleran district wherethe waters drain to the Pacific Ocean, we find a vastterritory where the forests are very scant or entirelywanting. Here and there in the Rocky Mountains, inplaces where from the position of the elevations in rela-tion to the winds there is more rainfall, we have con-siderable areas of wood, and almost everywhere along
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PALMETTO, FLORIDA. (page Ii7 OF NORTH AMERICA. 117 the streams there is a narrow belt of thin forests in thenaturally irrigated lands. It seems likely that whenthis continent was first occupied by man a large partof this unwooded area was forest-clad. It was a com-mon habit with our aborigines to set fire to the under-growth in order that after the conflagration the freshgrowth of vegetation might afford good pasturage forthe deer and buffalo. In this way the young forest treeswere killed so that when the larger plants of the speciesperished from old age, there were none to succeed them. Unfortunately the habit of burning the woods is com-mon with civilized men as well as with savages, andmuch of this destruction by fire has taken place sincethe country was settled by the whites. A more extendedand deliberate destruction of the woods, particularly thoseof the Appalachian forests, has necessarily been broughtabout in order to secure tilled fields. Probably aboutthree hundred thousand s

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