Private Estate Forestry 



At the present time about 82 per cent, of our forests 

 are under private ownership. The bulk is owned by 

 lumbermen, and has been acquired purely and simply as 

 a commercial speculation. Too frequently these owners 

 have used their control over the destinies of the private 

 forest lands of the country solely with a view to present 

 profits, without any regard for the future, whereby mil- 

 lions of acres of fine timber land have been allowed to go 

 to such a ruinous condition after logging operations 

 that it will be almost impossible to reforest them. 



P^or the past ten or twelve years considerable agitation 

 has been almost ceaselessly going on in connection with 

 the better use of private forest land, as to what should 

 be done or not be done. One does not question the good 

 intentions of those carrying on the propaganda, but many 

 of them have failed to comprehend all the points involved 

 as connected with those directly interested. Especially 

 has this been so with regard to lumbermen pure and 

 simple, and to forest owners in general. One of the prin- 

 cipal points which have been little appreciated is that of 

 taxation. The result of the system of taxing woodlands 

 and land suitable for forestation has been to discourage 

 scientific methods of both logging and planting. It is 

 not, however, my intention to pursue all the thousand 

 and one points connected with forest conservation in 

 general, but, in response to the editor's request for some 

 articles upon forestry, I propose to deal with a few mat- 

 ters pertaining to the above caption which for this pur- 

 pose does not embrace all the 82 per cent, of privately- 

 owned forest, but merely in connection with country es- 

 tates which are the owners' place of abode, kept up for 

 his recreation and pleasure rather than as an investment. 



There are many estates coming under the latter cate- 

 gory upon which exist more or less opportunities for 

 forestry work and which would have their intrinsic, as 

 well as artistic, value increased year by year by a prop- 

 erly-planned system of sylviculture. Of course, one 

 realizes that a country estate, however artistically the 

 house has been designed an<l the grounds laid out. has 



By Arthur Smith. 



little or no intrinsic value added to it thereby, any more 

 than a high-class oil painting or piece of sculpture has 

 such value. Those country homes where the house is 

 merely a costly monument of ostentatious vulgarity set in 

 the midst of inartistic surroundings — and there are manv 

 of them — cannot be said to have any value at all. 



Where forestry possibilities exist and they are taken 

 advantage of, a crop of timber can be obtained worth up 

 to $500 per acre in fifty years from the time of planting 

 upon land which is useless for an}thing else. There will 

 doubtless always be plenty of uses for lumber, even if 

 cities are built entirely of steel and concrete, and as the 

 virgin forests are being rapidly used up, planting young 

 trees must be a profitable investment, and it would cer- 

 tainly increase the intrinsic value of any estate. Then 

 there are conservation of the water supply and distribu- 

 tion of rainfall, which have a direct connection with the 

 amount of forest and which it behooves everyone to take 

 into consideration. Hills denuded of trees cause floods 

 at one period and drought at another. The value of 

 windbreaks is too frequently ignored and any amount of 

 room exists for their use upon numberless country estates. 



The general indifference to sylviculture is due to sev- 

 eral reasons, but principally to the length of time which 

 must elapse before a crop of trees can be turned into 

 lumber, and the taxation question above mentioned. In 

 some States reforestation is encouraged by giving away 

 voung trees. These, however, can be bought very cheap- 

 iv from the trade, two-year seedlings costing $2.50 per 

 thousand, and it does not appear fair to use public money 

 to handicap the nursery industry. The encouragement 

 to forest planting might be better given by making land 

 planted to forest trees free of taxation for a certain num- 

 ber of years. 



There are, however, many owners of country estates 

 who are far-sighted enough to realize the expediency of 

 doing all they can in the way of reforestation, and the 

 writer was glad a few years ago to embrace the oppor- 

 tunitv of taking a position upon an estate where forestrv 



RESIDENCE WITH PART OF WOODLANDS. 



THE REFORESTATION IS BEING FIRST DONK OX THE SI-OPE AND ALONG THE 

 TOP TO THE EAST. 



