Current Literature 287 



Both authors have chosen the more confined title of ''forest 

 valuation," yet to some extent they introduce discussion on gen- 

 eral financial and statical problems which would suggest as more 

 appropriate the broader title of "forest finance." Discussions of 

 the relation of capital and income, of a financial rotation, of a 

 comparison of use of land in agriculture and forestry, as Roth 

 has them — these are statical inquiries. Both authors have, how- 

 ever, to the reviewer's mind an erroneous conception of the mean- 

 ing of forest statics and its position in the larger subject of forest 

 finance, of which forest valuation and statics are the two broad 

 chapters. 



Although Chapman cites the proper and clear definition of 

 Schlich and repeats it in the preface, thereby supposedly making 

 it his own, his chapter under the title Forest Statics is concerned 

 merely with the methods of balancing accounts and figuring 

 profits. There is nothing of "weighing the comparative merits of 

 dififerent methods of treatment to which forests may be sub- 

 jected," as Schlich's definition would require, and as was the 

 conception of the inventor of the term forest statics, Hundes- 

 hagen. Only one of the static problems, that of the comparison of 

 agricultural and forest values, is treated in a chapter of 14 pages. 



The balancing of income and outgo is, to be sure, in a manner a 

 statical comparison, but the operation of mere book balancing 

 needs hardly the dignity of a special term : statics connotes rather 

 a balancing of such balances, the application of forest valuations 

 to test the financial effect of different methods of management. 



The entire absence in Chapman's volume of attention to the 

 most important statical inquiry, that of the financial rotation, is a 

 serious omission. Even in a book on valuation pure and simple 

 one can hardly afford to omit this subject, for expectancy values 

 are based on rotation. 



Roth also defines statics as weighing "advantages and disad- 

 vantages of both lines," i. e., "whether to change from farm crop 

 to forest crop pays better," but eventually the balancing of costs 

 and incomes seems to him statics and not alone the comparison of 

 valuations, the comparison of methods of treatment or methods of 

 capital employment in which costs and incomes have already been 

 balanced. Incidentally, Judeich, whom Roth correctly cites as 

 exponent of forest finance, was not, as is stated, at any time head 



