The turpentine industry is the chief one in parts of the South where the Long-leaved Pine thrives. The United States produces more turpentine and rosin than any other country in the world. The turpentine is used in paints and in various arts. The rosin is used in varnish, laundry soap, etc. These two products come from the sap or "gum" of the pine tree. The sap is secured by tapping or "boxing" the tree, and then keeping the cut ducts of the sap-wood open by "chipping" or "pulling," that is, by putting a new "streak" on the tree. This has to be done once a week from March 1 to November 1. The sap used to be collected in a "box" or deep notch cut in the base of the tree, but the modern method is to have it run into cups made of zinc or of burned clay similar to flower-pots. The sap is taken to a turpentine still where it is heated over a furnace. This drives off the turpentine or "spirits" as steam or vapor, which is condensed to liquid again by passing through the worm of the still surrounded by cold water. The rosin or resin is left behind. [Illustration: COMMON FALL MUSHROOM An excellent article of food growing commonly in old pasture fields. Range: Temperate and tropical regions all over the world. Photograph by G. Clyde Fisher.] The Sugar Maple grows from Florida and Texas northward to Manitoba and Quebec, but it is only in the northern part of its range that the maple sugar industry thrives. This delicious food is one of the many that we learned to utilize from the Indians. The sap is obtained by tapping the tree in the spring before the leaves come out, the best weather for the flow of sap being that when it freezes at night and thaws in the daytime. The sap is boiled down; that is, the water is driven off and the sugar remains. It takes about three gallons, or a little more, of sap to make a pound of maple sugar. Three to four pounds of sugar is an average yield for one tree in a season. Much of the sap, however, is not boiled down into sugar, but the boiling is stopped while it is in the form of syrup. If you have ever eaten buckwheat cakes with real maple syrup you will always esteem the Sugar Maple tree. The forests perform extremely valuable services for mankind entirely apart from the products they yield. First, they prevent erosion, or the washing away of soil by the water that falls as rain. After the trees have been cut away, very often, especially upon hillsides, the most productive soil is washed away, usually clear off of the original owner's farm, and deposited in the flood-plains or bottoms of creeks and rivers or in river deltas--in places where it cannot be utilized to any great extent. Thus erosion causes a tremendous loss to farmers, and it is chiefly due to the thoughtlessness of the American people in destroying the forests.