When the sawmills were built and there came a demand from abroad for lumber, the forests were attacked upon a much larger scale. The need of the moment was all that concerned the lumbermen, and they took no care for the preservation of the young trees, which in time would have renewed the supply. The litter of the trunks and branches which they left upon the ground furnished fuel for the fires which frequently swept over these areas and killed the remaining growth. As a result of these fires, the few animals that have escaped the hunters have been killed or driven from their homes, and the forest cover, which would retain much of the moisture and preserve it for the supply of the streams in summer, has been destroyed. The removal of the forest cover leads also to the washing away of the soil, the shoaling of the streams, floods in spring, and low water in summer. In fact, all the people and industries of the region are affected by its loss. It may take hundreds of years for the country to recover; indeed, if the rainfall is light, the forests may never grow again, without artificial aid. [Illustration: FIG. 130.--A BURNED FOREST, CASCADE RANGE, OREGON] The careless stockman, seeking to enlarge his pastures by burning the underbrush, sets fires which often destroy hundreds of square miles of forest. The summer camper and the prospector also frequently go on their way without extinguishing the camp fire, though a great forest fire may be the result. Ours is a fertile and productive earth, capable of supporting a multitude of living things. For ages the lower animals, as well as savage man, lived under the protection of Nature, making the best use of her products of which they were capable; but they never brought about the unnecessary, and often wanton, destruction of which we are guilty,--we, who call ourselves civilized. In killing the wild animals we cannot make the plea of necessity, as can savages who have no other means of support. Likewise, there is no necessity for killing the beautiful singing birds, merely for their plumage. [Illustration: FIG. 131.--EROSION UPON AN UNPROTECTED SLOPE] The forests are cut away without any thought of the retribution which Nature is sure to bring upon us. They are of vast importance to the well-being of the country and are the natural possession of all its people. We ought not to permit them to be destroyed indiscriminately for the benefit of a few. We need lumber for many purposes; but 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.