56 Vermont Agricultural Report. 



ject was after all too much ''in the air," poorly understood in its 

 fundamentals, hazy in the minds of even those who felt that 

 something was wrong, something should be done, although they 

 did not know what and how. 



Times have somewhat changed since then ; much more in- 

 formation is abroad on the subject, the need for attention much 

 more pressing and therefore much more hope of inaugurating 

 practical measures. 



To assist you in devising such measures I propose to dis- 

 cuss somewhat systematically some fundamental conceptions 

 which one must keep in mind when formulating a forest policy. 



Everybody interested in the subject knows, of course, that 

 a forest does, or may, fulfil two functions in the economy of 

 man. It does, or may, furnish valuable material, and it does, 

 or may influence climate, soil conditions and waterflow. If we 

 have in mind the first function we speak of supply forests ; if 

 the latter function is prominent, we speak of protection forests. 

 The first function, that of supplying us with material for the 

 ten thousand uses to which wood can be applied, is of course, 

 obvious and has been so from time immemorial, but the protec- 

 tive quality of a forest growth, while suggested time and again 

 by careful observers even in antiquity, has been realized and 

 definitely investigated only within the last 50 to 100 years, and, 

 we may say at once, its full bearing is not yet understood, and, 

 in some directions at least, its practical importance is still in 

 doubt. 



That any and every forest growth, nay a single tree, exer- 

 cises some influence upon its surroundings, any student of 

 natural philosophy who knows of the interrelation and inter- 

 action of things in general, will readily admit. But how far this 

 influence is of practical value to man and important enough to 

 enter into his considerations of economic life,, that is another 

 question. Grant, for instance, what has not as yet been proven 

 by any means, that forests influence rainfall — and that means 

 as is usually assumed, that they increase the same — two practical 

 questions would still arise, namely whether such increase would 

 be beneficial or the reverse, and whether it would be of sufficient 

 moment to make the preservation of a forest growth desirable 

 on ground that might be better used for farm crops. In some 

 regions, as in the dry plains, the increase of rainfall would be 

 welcome, but in other regions, as in your own State, for in- 

 stance, it may be the very opposite. From this simple contem- 

 plation it is at once obvious that we must discriminate between 

 the general truth and its practical application to different 

 localities. 



