Periodical Literature 525 



From a yield table of spruce I site, the author shows that after 

 the 40th year the ringwidth decreases and asks, "Does this not 

 prove a steady deterioration of the nutrition?" (Not at all!) 

 Everything has remained the same excepting one thing — the 

 volume or stock. To the accumulation of volume, therefore, we 

 must ascribe it that the trees, the stand, are disturbed and impeded 

 in their function of nutrition ; the stand suffers from overcrowding. 

 The defenders of the normal stock idea in a way admit their mis- 

 take by attempting to arrest the sinking of the increment by thin- 

 ning and interlucation practices by which "to create more favorable 

 conditions of nutrition" in the so-called "normally" stocked 

 stands. "May one really talk of normal conditions, if by this 

 normality the production is limited and can be lifted out of this 

 limit (in the last age classes) only by giving up normality ? Or is it 

 a normal condition, if stock exists in such insufficient amount 

 (lower age classes) that it lacks the ability to utilize all actually 

 present nutrients? How can a forest be called normal in which 

 during its life of 80 to 120 years the increment conditions only for a 

 very short time are what they should be, i. e. , normal ? Briefly, the 

 silvicultural mistake consists in putting growing stock in place of 

 increment and forcing the free functions of life into a rigid frame." 



The economic mistake in the conception of the normal stock, 

 the author asserts, is illustrated by comparing the increment curve 

 with the stock curve, which show a disproportion at the same time 

 between interest and capital, espcially for the older age classes, 

 i. €., for the time when the accimiulated stock reaches nearly a 

 maximimi. " Undoubtedly," he asserts, "the normal forest suffers 

 by an insufficiency of wood capital in the early stages and by a 

 surplus of poorly paying wood capital at the end of its life." This 

 defect injures the owner as well as the whole country, whose inte- 

 rest is to secure the maximtmi production of volume per acre (?). 

 If this maximum yield is once established, every single acre should 

 be managed for this maximimi annual product. The normal stock 

 methods cannot satisfy this demand because they do not pay 

 attention to the current increment. 



Moreover, these methods cannot satisfy market fluctuations and 

 changes in demand for different size, species, etc. 



The author, then, comes to the constructive part of his discussion. 

 After all, he does not propose to abandon the normal stock idea, 

 as the French do, but to change its name to "rational" stock, as 



