1885.] VALUE OF GOVERNMENT TIMBER LANDS. 



THE VALUE AND MANAGEMENT OF GOVERNMENT 

 TIMBER LANDS. 



By ]Sr. 11. Eglestox, Chief of the Forestry ]Jivision of the Agri- 

 cultural Department. One of the l*apers read at the United 

 States Department of Agriculture, May 7-8, 1884. Com- 

 municated by the Author. 



THE value of Government timber lands, like that of all timber 

 lands, is of two kinds. They have a value for their com- 

 mercial products, such as lumber, bark, resins, seeds, etc. This 

 value will depend upon the character of the trees growing on the 

 lands, their kind, their abundance, their size, their accessibility, the 

 facilities for obtaining their products, the distance at which they are 

 from a proper market, and the character of the demand for them or 

 their products. These, not to mention other considerations, must 

 enter into any satisfactory estimate of the commercial value of any 

 timber lands. This value of timber lands, therefore, will vary 

 greatly Avith time and place. Fifty years ago, for instance, the 

 great pine forests of Michigan had, we may say, no commercial value, 

 because they were so remote from population, and consequently 

 from market, that there was no demand for what has since sold for 

 millions and made thousands rich. Ten years ago the timber lands 

 of Oregon and Washington Territory had little, if any, commercial 

 value, for the same reason. Now, the completion of the Pacific 

 Eailroad, and the approximate exhaustion of the forests of Michigan, 

 Wisconsin, and Minnesota have given a greatly increased value to 

 those lands. 



So, again, forests, composed of the best kinds of trees, may be 

 growing on mountain-sides of such altitude and so difficult of 

 approach that they will not pay any one for converting them either 

 into lumber or fuel. Or they may be growing in inaccessible 

 swamps, and on that account will have no commercial value, and 

 the lands sustaining such forests will have no market price. 



But timber lands have another value besides that which is com- 

 mercial, and this may be a higher one than any which can be 

 measured by dollars and cents. This may be called their climatic 

 and hj-gienic value, though in many cases it blends intimately with 

 the commercial. The most careful and scientific investigations have 

 showai beyond question that forests have a very perceptible influence 

 in modifying climate. They have much to do with the temperature 

 and moisture of the atmosphere in their vicinity and for a consider- 

 able distance from them. They influence the atmospheric currents. 

 If they are not direct producers of rain, they affect its distribution. 



C 



