60 Vermont Agriculturai- Report. 



I formulate at once the fourth and very important of my 

 fundamentals, which must not be lost sight of by the forestry 

 reformer. 



The production of a desirable zi}ood crop involves a time 

 element, which counts by many decades, and hence, long before 

 the necessity is actually apparent, there is need to look out for 

 the future. Indeed it is this time element in forest production 

 which accounts for the slow development of the forestry idea 

 itself in our country. 



Not only is it difficult to see so far ahead, to calculate con- 

 ditions of supply and demand in an industry which even at 

 present is, at least in regard to conditions of supply, poorly in- 

 formed, but what interest has the present converter of forests, 

 the lumberman, in such a distant future? — and he would appear 

 the only agent in whose hand the future lies. 



There are two ways of providing for the future of wood 

 supplies, namely either to plant or sow the new crop after the 

 old crop of nature has been harvested, or else to let nature do 

 the sowing by leaving enough seed trees of valuable kinds, re- 

 moving also the damaging shade of the less valuable kinds, the 

 tree weeds, which Nature usually favors. 



In addition, there is a method of lengthening out the time 

 during which a given forest may furnish supplies, namely by 

 leaving some of the trees already grown unused : limiting the 

 cut to a certain smallest diameter, a measure which is now broad- 

 ly advocated as desirable. It is evident that unless new seeding 

 produces a new crop this measure only very partially meets 

 the needs of the future : it merely defers the harvest and slightly 

 increases the product of the same acres. 



But what do all these methods of providing for the future 

 imply financially? They imply that the owner of a forest prop- 

 erty either make a direct outlay for planting, or spend indirectly, 

 by extending time and space over which his logging operations 

 must be carried on, removing brush and tree weeds to secure 

 the natural seeding; or else he must leave something unused, 

 which he might have used and turned into dollars, for the future. 

 Upon this self evident argument I formulate the fifth funda- 

 mental, which those who would drive the lumberman to do better 

 must not forget. 



Financial forestry, i. c, conservative lumbering and repro- 

 duction of zvood crops means curtailing or foregoing present 

 revenue or making present expenditures for the sake of a future 

 revenue. 



This may, in the end, prove more profitable than the mere 

 exploitation which our lumbermen now pursue, and certainly 

 the forest administrations of Germany and other countries have 



