446 JOURNAL OP FORESTRY 



ance for treeless areas that have been overlooked, and the total urban 

 area is rather small anyway. (At the time of the last census it appar- 

 ently amounted to less than i per cent in Maine, and scarcely 15 per 

 cent in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.) After these two deductions 

 are made, it is pretty safe to assume that the remainder of the land not 

 in farms is in forest ; for in this part of the world all Jand that was 

 once wooded tends to revert to forest when unoccupied, and although 

 considerable areas of forest may be cut clean by lumbermen from time 

 to time, the trees usually begin to grow again at once, so that it is still 

 forest land. 



To the woodland outside of farms must then be added that in farms, 

 which is given directly for 1870, 1880, and 1910. For intermediate 

 census years we may assume without serious error that the ratio of 

 woodland to total unimproved farm land was the same in 1890 as in 

 1880, and in 1900 as in 1910, or else interpolate a little. The woodland 

 for 1850 and i860 may be estimated in a similar manner from the 1870 

 figures. 



Back of 1850 we are somewhat at sea, having only the population 

 figures to go by (except that farm products were returned in 1840). 

 But we can now assume that the ratio of farm land to population was 

 the same for several decades previous to 1850 as it was then, unless 

 there was a decided change in the ratio soon after 1850, in which case 

 we may infer that the change was going on in the same direction before 

 that time and adjust the figures accordingly. Some allowance can be 

 made here for certain known circumstances. In general, the ratio of 

 farm land to population tends to decrease with the progress of inven- 

 tion and industry, as it has done in Massachusetts (from 3.4 acres per 

 capita in 1850 to 0.9 acre in 1910) ; but in thinly settled regions, where 

 lumbering and fishing were at first more important than agriculture, as 

 in Maine (which had 7.8 acres of farm land per capita in 1850 and 

 lo.i in 1880), it naturally increases as agriculture develops. In Ver- 

 mont the ratio varied very little between 1850 and 1910, and we can 

 therefore carry the same ratio all the way back to 1790 with some 

 confidence. 



Whatever uncertainty there may be in this method of estimating the 

 farm land between 1790 and 1850, the possible error in the total forest 

 area is proportionately less, at least where the woodland is in the ma- 

 jority, as was the case in nearly every eastern state prior to 1850. 

 For the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, apparently the best we 

 can do is to assume that the forest area decreased pretty steadily from 

 the time of first settlement to the first census. 



