224 MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



but if left to its own sweet will and not disturbed by fire and browsing 

 animals will reproduce a crop of trees. How long will it take to do 

 this? Sixty, eighty or a hundred years. Suppose the present stand is 

 worth six dollars pe? M. on stump, then an acre is worth |42. Now this 

 |42, at simple interest will, in 100 years double itself six times or at the 

 end of the period will amount to .f2,688. If protected from fire and 

 stock this acre will at the end of the time have another crop that will 

 in all probability with the normal increase in price of lumber be worth 

 at least three times the present crop or |126. The calculation need not 

 be carried farther to prove that forestry of and in itself does pay on 

 land that is not at all or poorly adapted for growing farm crops. 



The business of forestry for lumber does not lend itself readily to the 

 pursuit of the private individual of small means but, to meet the best 

 success, must be carried on by companies or by men of large means 

 who are accustomed to looking far into the future and can aft'ord invest- 

 ment at low rates for long periods. 



One may gTOw posts and poles in as short a, period as twelve years and 

 although the demand for these things has never been and probably never 

 will be so great as for lumber, yet the man who grows a few acres of trees 

 for home use will soon find that he has enough and to spare, for if he 

 succeeds in raising only 1,600 posts per acre at 320 per mile this one 

 acre would yield enough posts for five miles of fence. 



It remains to be proven that forests actually cause an increase of pre- 

 cipitation, but there is no doubt that they do have an important influ- 

 ence on what does fall. We cannot to any appreciable degree modify 

 cosmic climate. We can modify local climate only within very narrow 

 iimits, but one thing we can do and that is to take care of the climate 

 that nature gives. In some points forest crops are comparable to agri- 

 cultural crops, but in many ways they are not. A forest in its proper 

 sense has a wider influence than the boundaries of any one farm or town- 

 ship and often even counties. The ultimate influence of a forest may be 

 felt hundreds and even a few thousand miles away. Just at this moment 

 the lack of forests about the head waters of the Mississippi is, if doing 

 no greater damage, driving hundreds of people from their homes that are 

 scattered over the country in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The 

 sudden and excessive swelling of our rivers which carry away bridges, 

 buildings, farm and manufacturing equipment, livestock, sometimes hu- 

 man beings and vast quantities of the richest and best soil, these are 

 the things that should and will in time support ''Forestry from an 

 l^conomic Standpoint." 



