The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-10-10
Vast Tracts of Lands in Alabama Covered With Growth Which Is Practically Worth less From Lumber mans Standpoint.

The Southern Lumbermen.
 recent bulletin of the Forest Serv- ice places the timber area of Alabama at 20.000,000 acres out of total of 32,- 818.560 acres The area Of the State originally in ftimber was 29.040.000 acres. Roughly speaking. 10.000.oo0 acres of the original forest growth has been denuded, and two-tnirds of the area of the State remains in wood lands.
 It would be the biggest sort of a mistake, however. to interpret these figures as meaning that anything like 20.000,00O acres remain in virgin tim Der growth of valuable quality. Prob ably only few million acres exist up- on which no denudation of whatever sort has occurred, and even of this only a small part is of the-best grade and quality. Naturally the pest of the timber. most accessibly located, would be the first to go. What is left. ex- cept where recently 1t has been held by the owners as an investment. Is of in- ferior quality, or far less advanta- geously located for utilization.
 A widespread fallacy exists In the public mind as to the extent and char acter of the original timber growth of all this Southern country. When the first settlers came the forests were a menace and difficulty, harboring all sorts of known and unknown foes No one can read the accounts of the early explorers. in the light of recent knowl- edge, without being impressed with the extent to which their imagination was profoundly impressed by the dark, for bidding forests. Naturally they exag- gerated In their own minds, and in all the accounts they wrote. the extent of the forests and the density of the tree growth.
 Tennessee First Explored.
 Tennessee was one of the first States west of the Appalachian Mountains to be explored. Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, and as far west as the falls on the Ohio. where Louisville now stands, and the point on the Cumber- land where Nashville now stands, has been reached many times by the hardy hunters from the Virginia settlements, long before any part of the immense area between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi River had been penetrated by any other than the French Jesuits. The accounts of all these early ex- plorers. and at least three of them were men of considerable education who wrote elaborate journals or diar- les, teem with reiterated references 10 the extent of the forests. the difhcuity of traversing them. and the dangers which they concealed. IL IS only py close reading of Christopher Gint Journal, for instance, that 1t can pc seen that an immense area in Central Kentucky and Tennessee. reaching down to within twenty-five miles or where Nashville now stands. was prac- tically without large tree growth. More than one of the earliest explorers speaks of 1t as prairie" while all or them speak of 1t as "barren, a term which still survives in describing a sec -tion of the country. Clint devotes brief paragraph to wondering what produced this absence Of timber growth, but the whole matter IS passed over with less than one-tenth of the space he devoted to the dif1culties of traversing many wooded areas. which we may now know must have been relatively small in extent.
 The distribution of forest growth. like that of any other crop. Is mat ter of soil formation. Not all of the areas of any Southern State by any means was provided with soil stlt- able for forest growth or had been suit able long enough for the growth to anpear. and there were wide stretches In every State almost barren of mer- chantable trees when the white man first came This is apt to be forgotten by the people of today, They are prone to think that from the Atlantic to the Mississippi the country was one un- broken stretch of heavy forest growth. Hardly greater failacy could be conceived. and 1t Is one that has been at the basis of much of the talk of the inexhaustibleness of our forest resources. We got a wrong idea of the extent and quality of this forest growth in the very beginning. and It has taken years to even partly correei that view.
 Land Suited for Timber.
 rt should be remembered. however, that many factors contributed to the distribution of the original forest growth. and that much of the lano upon which there was no considerap'e tree growth when the white man came Is admirably suited to such growth now, For instance. hundreds Of saw mills have been established and Nvea out profitable existence in the SO, called "oak- -barrens" of Tennessee ah" Kentucky, which were spoken ot as ~ prairie country by the explorers or 'So