BASIC PROBLEMS IN FOREST PATHOLOGY 223 



this hrst silvicultural act of utilizing mature and overmature timber 

 and eliminating diseased and generally undesirable trees, analogous 

 to a first improvement felling, is also the last silvicultural act. The 

 sales area, after a more or less thorough sanitation, is nothing but an 

 enclosure in the vast surrounding virgin forest left to shift by itself 

 and exposed to all the controllable and uncontrollable factors of 

 cumulative risk. For a number of years the young forest enjoys all 

 the advantages of increased light and space and of comparative free- 

 dom from disease, but in the course of time foliage and kindred dis- 

 eases impairing the increment, and later also heartwood-destroying 

 fungi enter the new forest from the outside. Here also the result of 

 a first cutting in the long run can be nothing but another virgin, highly 

 abnormal forest. 



The forester cannot but view this development with grave concern. 

 If there is any reason for the very existence. of American silviculture 

 il must evidently be to utilize mature and overmature timber for the 

 benefit of the present owners and to adequately provide for the timber 

 needs of future generations. But under no circumstances can the 

 duplication of virgin, highly abnormal forests, with their tremendous 

 loss from increment-impairing and heartwood-destroying fungi, from 

 insects and other factors, be called adequate. Forest regulation, the 

 backbone of any silviculture worthy of the name, means the closest 

 approach to the ideal normal forest for the purpose of sustained yield. 

 The European forester operates in the already regulated forest. In 

 America, as in all newly settled forested countries, the virgin forest, 

 not the regulated forest, is the starting point, the raw material to be 

 shaped by the art of silviculture. 



The only silvicultural operations of American forestry at the 

 present time, unless supplemented in due season by further activities, 

 cannot result in anything but the creation of a second virgin forest 

 minus the large values accumulated in very old trees, for it is not to 

 be assumed that future generations will be able to afford to wait for 

 several centuries before they go back to areas once cut over. Forest 

 regulation is simply put off indefinitely. A great deal of the initial 

 expense of the first improvement felling will be lost. The next improve- 

 ment felling, if left to future generations, will cost not much less than 

 the first and there will be no timber values accumulated through 

 centuries to pay for it, as they do now, even taking into account the 

 steady advance in value of the inferior species and lower grades. 



