1906.] FOREST SERVICE FOR FARMERS. 21 5 



productiveness and value of his woodlot must not expect to 

 get something for nothing. It will pay him to cultivate his 

 land, woodland as well as plowland ; he will get more from it ; 

 but he cannot cultivate without putting in labor. When he be- 

 gins to make thinnings or improvement cuttings he must not 

 expect to secure his cordwood as easily as if he picked out his 

 best and biggest timber and cut it clean, or cut all that was 

 good and left the bad. You cannot eat your cake and have it 

 too; or rather, you cannot eat your woodland goose and keep 

 on pocketing future golden eggs. The difference is between 

 gathering your capital, on the one hand, and letting it roll up 

 interest on the other. If you can make the cultivation pay for 

 itself in the incidental product of wood, you are not doing 

 badl}-. If you can make your improvement cuttings more than 

 pay, it is very much like finding money. You will then, in fact, 

 have kept all of your cake, and had a taste of it too. 



Yet the forester, as a practical man, ought to be able to 

 tell you how on occasion you can harvest your timber at a rea- 

 sonably low cost and at the same time provide for a speedy re- 

 newal of the forest. It is hard to give general prescriptions 

 in such matters ; ordinarily the Forest Service tries to answer 

 requests for information from individual owners by sending an 

 agent to make an examination and give advice on the ground. 

 But I believe that in this region as good a method to recom- 

 mend as any I can give you is what the forester calls the group 

 method. Select a spot, or several spots if one will not supply 

 what you w^ant to cut, where your forest crop is ripest — pos- 

 sibly overripe; and clear, with due care of course for young 

 growth, a hole in your forest, taking care that the diameter of 

 this hole is not more than twice the height of the surrounding 

 trees. Another year, or better several years later, after you 

 have opened as many holes as you think advisable, but not until 

 after seedlings have had a chance to establish themselves 

 wherever they are needed, you can begin to widen the holes by 

 cutting in concentric rings about them, and this can be con- 

 tinued until the whole area has been cut over. By this method 

 you can get an entirely new seedling forest, if you are cutting 

 trees which do not sprout, or if you have an old or deficient 

 sprout forest you will fill up the blanks and get supplementary 

 seedlings under way. 



