186 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



FORESTRY. 



It is to be regretted that the tendency of American writers on 

 forestry has been to conceive of it mainly as involving tree X)lanting 

 and the idea of creating new forests by artificial means, while our 

 millions of natural forests were jjermitted to be slaughtered with 

 entire disregard to the dictates of forestry. The application of forest 

 management to them has been entirely overlooked. 



So little is the nature of forest growth understood, that lumbermen 

 and prominent owners of white-pine mills have even asserted that the 

 reproduction of white pine cannot be, or at least is not, effected by seed. 

 Common sense and the experience of Xew England in its spontaneous 

 white-pine growth should have prevented the utterance of such state- 

 ments. Vast stretches of the finest white-pine forests have been 

 needlessly laid waste, and the presumption is that the Southern pine- 

 ries will be utilized with the same reckless devastation. The hard- 

 wood forests and coppices of the farmer, which could most easily 

 have been kej^t in an ever improving condition, have been deteriorated 

 unne cessarily for lack of knowledge of the first principles of forest 

 management. 



It has been often popularly stated that what we most want to know 

 is: What to plant, how to plant, and where to plant. But before 

 answering these questions we should first ask: For what object do we 

 wish to plant? since the method of planting and of future manage- 

 ment of the plantation, as well as the kind of timber to be selected, 

 depend largely upon the answer to that question. 



Forestry, like agriculture, attempts by correct management to pro- 

 duce, without exhausting the soil or favorable conditions of growth 

 and at the smallest expense, the best possible returns. This may 

 mean either the greatest amount of wood in a given time, as when 

 working for fire-wood or charcoal billets, or the production of cer- 

 tain sizes in the shortest time, as when a farmer wishes to supply 

 himself with posts and rails and short tool-stock, or else the produc- 

 tion of the highest soil rent — financial success, for which the lumber- 

 men will work. 



Either of these objects will of course blend with the others; yet as 

 one or the other object is prominent, it is but natural that the meth- 

 ods of management, as well as the choice of timber, &c. , should vary. 



On mountain-sides and on the prairie an additional consideration, 

 the indirect influence of the forest on water regulation and climate — 

 shelter forest — again modifies the method of management. 



It would, therefore, be impossible to give general advice as to for- 

 est management applicable under all circumstances; yet, besides the 

 more or less well understood methods in the propagation of frees, 

 there are certain principles of forestry by which forest planting is 

 distinguished from tree planting, and which have also a general 

 bearing on all methods of forest management. 



The arboriculturist, the nurseryman, the la-ndscape gardener, and 

 the roadside planter, has for his object the individual trees, or at 

 best a group of trees, in their outward appearance. Into forestry 

 several considerations enter, which the arboriculturist may neglect. 

 The forester has to do with an aggregate of trees; be must study and 

 take account of the relation and the influence of one on the other in 

 their individual development through a long series of years, during 

 which each species shows changing habits and differences of devel- 

 opment. As he does not wish simply to grow trees, but to produce 



