NORMAL FOREST AND ACTUAL FOREST 

 NORMAL GROWING STOCK AND ACTUAL GROWING 



STOCK 

 NORMAL STAND AND ACTUAL STAND 



(With apologies to the knowing ones!) 

 By Filibert Roth 



Miinger's interesting and concise article in the Proceedings of 

 the Society of American Foresters, 1915, page 18, makes me 

 venture a few suggestions. 



When a farmer looks at a field of growing corn he says, "It is 

 a good, fair, medium or poor stand." How does he know it? 

 Evidently he has in his mind a measure by which to judge. This 

 measure is not exact ; if it is for Michigan it is not the same measure 

 as used in Missouri and Iowa. But it is a measiire generally 

 accepted, usefid and very much relied upon by millions of farmers. 

 This measure is not the best possible crop, but rather an average 

 crop, a good, full stand of com for the particular age and for the 

 particular district. It is the farmer's nonnal stand of corn, and 

 is one link in his normal corn-yield table, for he has a measure for 

 com three weeks old and from there up to harvest time. 



The same process of measuring is applied to other crops, to 

 live stock, and it is applied to the forest crop. The actual stand 

 of com is what he sees before him in the field, the stand he is 

 judging, comparing, measuring by his measure, the normal stand. 



With the development of even-aged, planted stands of timber 

 in Europe it became practicable to develop just such a measure 

 in forestry as is used by the farmer. The peculiarities of the 

 forest, large size, difficulty of seeing a whole field, etc., made it 

 necessary to do more than was needed by the farmer, it became 

 necessary to measure the stands on different sites, to compile 

 averages and to record them. The result is the Normal Yield 

 Table. 



This yield table is the measure by which we judge any given 

 stand. The actual stand before us usually falls below this standard 

 or measure, but not always, for the Yield Table is a measure, like 

 the farmer's, not merely of the best, but of a number of good, 



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