70 ANNUAL rp:pqrts of department of agriculture. 



THE NEED FOR BETTER KNOWLEDGE OF FOREST GROWING AND FOREST USE. 



There are other investigations that must be vigorously prosecuted 

 if we are to make our forests supply the national needs. Like agri- 

 culture, forestry must be based on a store of accumulated knowledge 

 if full use of the soil is to be secured. Much remains to be learned 

 about growing timber crops. There is also large room for bettering 

 our practices in the use of forest products. In my previous reports 

 I have mentioned the need for more research, through which alone 

 can be obtained the technical information essential for bringing wood 

 use and wood growth into any sort of reasonable balance. This 

 need grows steadily. 



practical forestry by small owners. 



Almost one-third of our forest lands are owned by farmers. If 

 the practice of forestry were as well developed among them as are 

 the cultural practices applied in growing field crops, both their own 

 returns and the quantity and quality of timber grown would be 

 larger. In parts of the Northeast rural prosperity is closely related 

 to the profitable use of the poorer land, which it does not pay to 

 cultivate and which, even when kept in woods, is seldom as produc- 

 tive as it should be. In consequence, the machinery created under 

 the Smith-Lever Act should be utilized to bring about better han- 

 dling of farm woodlands through the method of demonstration and 

 practical example. There is much that can be done along extension 

 bnes to increase timber production at the very point where it would 

 most effectively aid the general agricultural situation by affording a 

 profitable employment of inferior soils. 



an immediate legislative PROGRAjM. 



It is not possible at the present time to foresee just how far the 

 efforts of the Federal Government to promote the growing of timber 

 should be carried. Far-reaching changes in our national concep- 

 tions of land use can not be brought about overnight. Necessarily 

 they come about by a process of evolution. The first great step toward 

 a permanent timber supply was the creation of national forests from 

 the public domain. A second step was taken by the Weeks law in 

 the extension of the national forests in the Eastern States through 



