FORESTRY B^ROM AN ECONOMIC STANDPOINT. 22a 



FORESTRY FROM AN ECONOMIC STANDPOINT. 



BY E. E. BOGUE^ MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 



In these days of get-rich-qiiick schemes forestry cannot be said to stand 

 much of a show in the race for riches. To be sure, land may be secured 

 by purchase or otherwise, that already supports a good stand of avail- 

 able timber that in a few months or even weeks can be converted into 

 ready cash. This compares favorably with other schemes for obtaining 

 quick returns. But this is not forestry. It may be called one branch 

 of the subject carried on in a rude manner and may be compared to the 

 man who cuts down his cherry trees in order the more easily to gather 

 the fruit. It sometimes happens that it is good policy to take off an 

 undesirable portion at time of fruiting and so it is desirable and proper 

 to remove a portion of the forest crop in order to save the part removed 

 and prevent injury to what is left. A common way of timber disposal 

 is to sell everything a man will buy on the stump regardless of species. 

 A somewhat less disastrous method is to sell only certain species as, 

 for instance, all the oak or ash or elm or pine or any particular species. 

 This removes not only that which is ripe and ready for harvest but much 

 that is in its prime and capable of earning more money for its owner than 

 at aiy other period of its life. In some cases there is a large number of 

 small seedlings an inch or less in diameter that are fatally injured. 

 Such work frequently destroys an even stand. The step from this to the 

 scientific method which if followed will continue to yield a definite har- 

 vest at stated periods for an indefinite time is not so great but that any 

 one who owns a piece of woodland can take it. Forestry enthusiasm 

 should not lead any one to the presumption that clean cutting should 

 never be practiced, for sometimes this is the wisest thing to do. Last 

 summer I visited a tract of Norway pine in Crawford county, that was 

 being cut and from the felled trees it was evident that they were just 

 about keeping alive. The stand was crowded, about 240 trees per acre, 

 and cut about 7,000 feet B. M. They were cut up into convenient lengths 

 and forty to eighty loaded onto a flat car. The diameter of the ends of 

 these pieces ranged from three to seventeen inches and the average of 

 fifty measurements was 1 0.1 inches. The scale per car was about 2,S00 

 feet B. M. There was no undergrowth to speak of and it was evident 

 that harvest time for that timber had both theoretically and practi- 

 cally come. Only a* few minutes' walk from these trees was a tract of 

 about twenty acres that had been cleared some years before and which 

 now supported a fine stand of growing Norway i)ines about waist 

 high. On a single square rod were counted no less than 05 young trees. 



The man who has to deal with trees needs to use good common sense 

 just as well as, and sometimes more than, anybody else. In the case 

 cited this company has control of large areas and has not, I under- 

 stand, the least intention of undertaking to make this land into farms. 

 They know well enough that such a venture would prove a failure, be- 

 cause the land is not at all adapted to either s})ocial or general farming 



