296 OHIO BIOLOGICAL SURVEY 



ECONOMIC ASPECTS 



No scientific study is necessary to demonstrate that the land of 

 this area is becoming poorer and poorer as its resources are dissipated 

 under the present wasteful system of management. Everywhere one 

 sees abandoned houses; in some parts of the area hardly half the houses 

 are now occupied. Old "worn-out" fields are numerous and the num- 

 ber is increasing rapidly year by j^ear. 



The causes which have led to this condition are several : First, the 

 greatest natural resource of the area was its timber. This has been 

 cut off to such a large extent that it is difficult to find even small patches 

 of undisturbed forest for botanical study. Lumbering is usually carried 

 on in one of two ways, depending on whether the timber is to be made 

 into railroad ties or sawed into lumber. Railroad ties, consisting 

 especially of Chestnut and Rock Oak, are usually cut and worked by 

 the owner of the land during the winter season. The large timber 

 having long since been removed, those trees of sufficient size to make 

 ties are felled and worked up in situ with but little disturbance of the 

 young growth around them. Except from the danger of fires from the 

 unused refuse and the fact that by this means the undesirable species 

 are left to grow and multiply while the valuable woods which are cut out 

 become scarcer and scarcer, this method of lumbering when conserva- 

 tively practised has much to recommend it. When, on the other hand, 

 a portable sawmill is brought into the country, its crew usually buys the 

 standing timber from the owner of the land. The lumberers having no 

 interest in the land, proceed to skin it, cutting every stick capable of 

 being made in a piece 2 by 4 inches or larger, with no regard for the 

 future. This method of lumbering is the most important cause of the 

 increasing poverty of the country. While the land-owner usually 

 secures a price sufficient to compensate him for the loss of the land, as 

 well as the timber, the community is permanently impoverished by the 

 loss of a forest w^hich, if conservatively handled, would have been a 

 permanent asset. 



Second, with the removal of the timber soil acidity* becomes very 

 prevalent and more and more land becomes utterly unfit for cultivation. 



I apply the word acidity here, for want of a better term, to soils which when moist 

 promptly redden blue litmus paper. In using the term I would not be understood as stating 

 that the reddening of litmus paper is a criterion of acidity, or of taking any position in the 

 controversies which are waging regarding this puzzling problem. I have merely noticed a 

 very marked and definite correlation between the wild vegetation and the reaction of the 

 soil to litmus paper. 



