96 Forestry Quarterly. 



forest as an independent unit, to regulate the felling budget en- 

 tirely according to silvicultural considerations and to lay up a 

 reserve fund against future lean years from present over-utiliza- 

 tion." 



When the government refuses to do this and prefers a saving 

 and equalization in nature, the reason is probably first, that the 

 capital made current is too easily disposed of for purposes of the 

 present, when the future will have a smaller revenue. Moreover, 

 an annual even cut is preferable from the standpoint of labor 

 conditions. Again, some minor sortiments — firewood, etc., do not 

 find a sufficiently large market to make an over cutting surely 

 profitable. In forestal calculations, the danger lies in extremes, 

 the formula may be correct, but the data for the calculation are 

 uncertain. 



Die Ertragsfahigkcit dcr badischen Domdnenhochwaldimgen. Forst- 

 wissenschaftliches Centralblatt, 1908, pp. 627-637. 



Whoever prates glibly and knowingly on 



Forest forest finance should be invited to read the 



Finance. sound, and what we consider epoch-making 



classical expose of the conditions of forestal 



finance calculation by the veteran Weise, formerly director of the 



forest academy at Munden. 



Forestal Statics is to investigate which of several procedures 

 is the more profitable, for instance whether it is more profitable 

 to cut a 10, 12 or 14 inch diameter, whether a rotation of 60 

 years or 100 years, whether planting or natural regeneration pro- 

 duces the more advantageous balance sheet. 



The trouble lies in the difficulty of ascertaining the data for 

 the calculation. "Statical calculations which are to deserve cre- 

 dence, are possible only when the effect of silvicultural measures 

 influencing soil and stand, volume and value production are 



known. This is, as we must admit, only rarely the case 



We have notions about it, but anything fixed and sure and 

 especially expressed in numbers, as is required in calculations, 

 we can hardly offer." (If this is true in Germany, what may we 

 think of the cock-sure finance calculators in our country. — Rev.) 



So far only wood volumes may be available, and those merely 

 of relative value. The statics of the bare ground are perhaps the 

 easiest, for here everything is supposition, and for this condition 



