FORFSTRY. 181 
THE FOREST RESERVE. 
, 
H. B. AYERS, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
Before taking such a step as the reservation of a large area of land for 
the purpose of cultivating timber, it is well that there be opposition, in 
order that there may be a thorough consideration of what results are 
likely to follow; and if, in this paper, I can point out some of the more 
direct and easily comprehended possibilities, I shall be content to leave 
the more abstruse to be expounded by those, who, by their training in 
European forest schools, may venture into dissertations that are difficult 
for one accustomed to think the growth and the cutting of timber a 
simple matter. 
To the woodsman this question is one of vital economy. All know th 
value of the forest. All know that a well timbered forty-acre tract is 
worth from $500 to $4,000, while the best forty of wild agricultural prairie 
or brush land in the state is hardly worth over $400. 
- We also know that, as things}go now, our great natural stores of timber 
are being cut,and little else than brush and blackened snags are to be 
found in their place on the old stump land. These stump lands, away 
from towns, are valued from $5.00 per acre down to nothing. 
If the obvious suggestions of the least common sense were carried out, 
fires would be prevented and our timber would grow up again of itself, 
furnishing a second crop in from 20 to 60 years. 
This crop would not be of the best; crooked and defective trees would 
predominate, but it would have many times the value of such iand as we 
now find along Snake river, Pine river, the upper Mississippi river near 
Grand Rapids, and, in fact, on all of the poorer land that has been lum- 
bered and burned over. 
It may be as well to come at once to the root of the evil, which is this: 
By the present system of disposing of the public timber lands, a bounty is placed 
on the destruction of the forests. 
The system operates in this way: the Federal timber is open to claim- 
ants at a nominal figure and the timber, when secured, is quickly sold, 
often at a gain of $100 per acre; all the marketable timber is then cut 
and floated down the stream, and the land is abandoned to the fires, that 
usually kill all or nearly all of the remaining growth. 
The loss is the people’s, a loss of resource. I do not refer to the timber 
that has been cut, for that has been used; but our loss is greater than the 
total loss of the standing timber would be. It is the loss to the state of that 
enormous amount of timber that is prevented from growing on lands that 
are producing nothing else, and which on the present forest area of the 
state should be 4,752,000,000 ft. B- M. per annum; to this must be added 
the amount of marketable timber destroyed by fire, which is estimated by 
some as nearly equal, during the past 30 years, to the amount that has 
been cut since lumbering began, or nearly 20,000,000,000 ft. B. M. 
The more one dwells on this subject, the more the losses appear, swell- 
ing the amount to enormous dimensions, seldom fully appreciated. 
