48 FOREST commissioner's REPORT. 



ble property to have. No matter how hard it may be cut, 

 the value cannot be entirely taken away from it. 



And yet the irrowth upon such land might readily be over- 

 yeariy"^ ^^ estimated, and it is easy, by continued hard cut- 

 growth. ting, to keep it insignificantly small. The land it 

 was said is extremely thrifty. Determinations by Pressler's 

 tables indicate that a fair percentage of growth for trees 

 between six and twelve inches diameter is three and one-half 

 per cent. But the question turns upon the base. Three and 

 one-half per cent on 500 cubic feet is seventeen and one-half 

 cubic feet of yearly growth per acre, an amount that per- 

 haps may be turned into current measures as seventy board 

 feet of lumber that may some time be utilized. This is, to 

 be sure, a very respt^ctable growth. It means that 1,000 

 feet of lumber every fifteen years may be taken from the 

 puhfcin* la»d. But suppose Mr. Newton had been cutting 

 Ki'mvTh. V^^h^ stuti\ and that instead of stopping when he 

 did, he had cut all the trees down to ten inches diameter at 

 four feet from the ground. Three hundred cubic feet more 

 are thus removed, the stand of trees six inches and over in 

 diameter is reduced to 200 cubic feet, the yearly growth on 

 which, reckoned in the same way, is only twenty-eight feet 

 B. M. 



A hard cut then reduces the growth upon land for a time 

 to very low figures. If this kind of treatment is maintained — 

 if as soon as trees get up where they are beginning to grow 

 something worth while, they are cut down — this unproduc- 

 tive condition becomes chronic, and the long-run yield of 

 timber from the land insignificantly small. To treat land 

 that way is like raising children only to have them die before 

 they come to do anything on their own account. It is killing 

 the goose that lays the golden egg. It is like fishing a trout 

 stream to death till nobody can catch anything, whereas a 

 policy that is not too greedy to leave a supply of stock fish 

 would maintain a condition from which all could take a rea- 

 sonable abundance. Small trees, while they grow a big per- 



