2l6 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Bear in mind, however, that if in any one year you cut 

 more wood than grows on your whole woodlot in that year, 

 you have diminished your principal, and if you cut over your 

 w^hole area before the area which you cut first has had time to 

 grow to maturity, a period will have to follow during which 

 your woodlot will stop paying dividends. 



The farmer is in a better position to care for his forest and 

 make money from it than other owners, because he can do this 

 work in the woods at a time when there is not much else to 

 be done on the farm — that is, in the winter. If he takes an 

 interest and is observing, if he goes into the woods with his 

 axe and notices what is happening, and thinks what he wants 

 and takes his measures accordingly, he will soon learn a good 

 deal about his forest as well as make a decided difference in 

 its value. 



The work which the Forest Service is doing for the farmer 

 is perhaps better appreciated in other parts of the country at 

 present than it is generally in the East. In the West the 

 farmers' need in a large part of the country is for water, and 

 the farmers there now recognize that the first and most impor- 

 tant means of securing water is through forest conservation, 

 not because forests make rain but because forests enable the 

 farmer to get the benefit of what rain does fall, through the 

 storing power of the forest. I was very much struck 

 last winter to hear a Congressman from western Kansas say in 

 Washington, at a very important meeting of forest users, held 

 under the auspices of the American Forestry Association, that 

 in his Congressional district alone — that is to say, in a region 

 having a population of about two hundred thousand people — 

 there was more arabi* land than in the entire kingdom of 

 Japan, if they only had water for it. Japan supports a popu- 

 lation of forty millions. Japan is a first-class power, about on 

 a par with England in population, and a little ahead of France, 

 We have room within our confines for empire after empire, 

 but the development of these western lands depends very 

 largely on irrigation. Irrigation and forestry are so closely 

 connected that one can not exist and do its full work without 

 the other. Tlie most important work of the forester in the 

 West is to conserve the water supply so as to hold the rain as 

 it falls and let it run down little by little from springs that flow 

 all the year, instead of rushing from the hillsides and moun- 



