Excerpt from North American Forests and Forestry: Their Relations to the National Life of the American People Odern civilization attains its height, and produces its blossoms and fruits, such as they are, for good and evil, in the artificial life of the great cities but its roots are sunk deeply into the soil prepared by nature herself. Millions of years before the first spark of intellectual life in a humanlike being made the beginning of a rude culture possible, that mysterious earth-life which throbs in the multitudinous surges of the ocean, the stormy atmosphere enveloping the crags of the Sierra, the torrid sunshine of the desert, the splashy brook of the meadow, and the soughing pines of the forest, had laid deeply and lovingly the founda tions without which there could have been none of the rich, full, invigorating activity of city life. Cut the threads which connect the humanity of New York and Chicago with the remotest solitude, and civilized life must wither and die. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.