American Forestry 



VOL. XX JANUARY, 1914 No. 1 



FORESTRY ON THE COUNTRY ESTATE 



By Warren H. Miller. 

 I. The Woodlot. 



IN almost every newly purchased species over vast areas, of protecting 

 country place there is considerable them from fire and insects, of seedling, 

 wooded area and rocky ground, the nursery and planting operations done on 

 woodlot and stony pasture of the a scale of millions of trees. Not only 

 erstwhile farm. The new owner looks must the forester be familiar with the 

 them over in some perplexity. He had identifying characteristics of our forest 

 set out to plan his estate with an eye tree species but he must know what soil 

 to aesthetic beauty, to surround himself base a given tree prefers, what its cli- 

 with pleasing vistas, rolling swales of matic requirements are, what rain sup- 

 green things growing, live stock and ply it thrives best under, the years a 

 buildings that would be a pride and stand takes to reach maturity, the 

 pleasure to the eye ; but here are some strength and value of its timber, the dis- 

 thirty or forty acres of "just woods," posal of its by-products and thinnings, 

 with perhaps a brook, for the most part its autumn coloration, date and dura- 

 brush and thicket, and, as for the stony tion of spring flowering, seed distribu- 

 pasture he sees a debit of a good many tion — a thousand details which act 

 hundred dollars spent on stoning it be- and react in the busy life of a forest 

 fore it will ever be ready for the plow, of growing trees. It is a fascinating 

 In fact an eye-sore of several acres of profession, and one that will appeal 

 stony ground has often been the deter- strongly to our youths of the future, a 

 rent to the purchaser of an abandoned profession that will be a long while be- 

 farm having otherwise excellent possi- coming crowded, for our State and na- 

 bilities. tional forest services are destined to be 

 Yet the exercise of a little practical the greatest of all our Government en- 

 forestry, such as every country gentle- terprises and can at present use every 

 man should be reasonably conversant graduate of our forest schools, 

 with, would cover the stony pasture But the country gentleman requires 

 with thriving trees at far less expense no such formidable array of scientific 

 than stoning, and transform the brushy attainments as does the trained forester 

 woodlot into a noble forest that will in order to practice the simple opera- 

 be a favorite place in your walks in the tions of making a forest of his woodlot 

 cool of the evening when the thrushes and reclaiming his stony pasture. Let 

 are singing. us assume at the outset that he already 

 Forestry does not mean, as popularly has all the arable land that he can man- 

 supposed, a mere knowledge of the age; that the correct balance of plant 

 various tree species plus a familiarity and animal life has been already seen 

 with mensuration and log scaling. It to or planned for; that the land to be 

 ^goes far beyond that. It is the science devoted to forestry will give its very 

 cr> of handling large masses of trees, of best commercial yield when so treated. 

 "^ securing their reproduction in the same While it is well to combine the aesthet- 



