The Uses of Forest
The uses of forests | | Forests and the many varying trees of which they are composed have, since the very earliest days played an important part in the life of mankind. It is because of this that men have realized their value and have taken steps to preserve them and to prevent their wanton and useless destruction.From the primitive days of the wigman, the house on stilts or the African but, wood has been the basic material used for men's housing to provide shelter from the animals. The wigwam and the African hut were built round a frame of timber. The elaborately attractive black and white houses of 'Merrie England' in the sixteenth century depended on wooden frames. even today, when steel girders from the frameworld of our huge modern buildings like those in the Raffles City in Singapore or the sky-scrapers of New York, wood still forms an important part of the smaller modern houses. Soft woods of all kinds are used fro frames and doors and a variety of hard woods for furniture.From earliest times too, wood has played a large part in transport. A rolling tree trunk, very probably showed primitive man the possible use of the wheel, perhaps as important a discovery as that of fire. In the earliest days of the automobile, wood was essential in its construction, but even before that, trishaws, carts, carriages and wagons, all made of timber enabled man to move from place to place overland. Men were equally dependent on wood for crossing water ad through all the staged from the hollowed-out log and the small boat built round a wooden frame right up to the first great sailing ships which first crossed over oceans, all means of transport were wooden-framed and wooden-walled.Another very important use of forests is a modern one . This is the cutting up of logs and timber for use in the making of paper, particularly the kind of paper on which our daily newspapers are printed. The logs of wood, when cut, are ground up by hue machines and are turned into wood pulp.