382 GEOWTH OF FOREST TREES. 



we are often told that, though he who buries an acorn maj hope 

 to see it shoot up to a miniature resemblance of the majestic tree 

 which shall shade his remote descendants, yet the longest life 

 hardly embraces the seed-time and the harvest of a forest. The 

 planter of a wood, it is said, must be actuated by higher motives 

 than those of an investment, the profits of which consist in direct 

 pecuniary gain to himself, or even to his posterity ; for if, in rare 

 cases, an artificial forest may, in a generation or two, more than 

 repay its original cost, still, in general, the value of its timber 

 will not return the capital expended and the interest accrued.* 



But the modern improved methods of sylviculture show vastly 

 more favorable financial results ; and when we consider the immense 

 collateral advantages derived from the presence of the forest, the 

 terrible evils necessarily resulting from its destruction, we can 

 not but admit that the preservation of existing woods, and the 



* According to Clave 0tudes, p. 159), the net revenue from the forests of the 

 state in France, making no allowance for interest on the capital represented by 

 the forest, is two dollars per acre. In Saxony it is about the same, though the 

 cost of administration is twice as much as in France ; in Wiirtemberg it is 

 about a dollar an acre ; and in Prussia, where half the income is consumed in 

 the expenses of administration, it sinks to less than half a dollar. This low 

 rate in Prussia and other German states is partly explained by the fact that a 

 considerable proportion of the annual product of the wood is either conceded 

 to persons claiming prescriptive rights, or sold, at a very small price, to the 

 poor. Taking into account the capital invested in forest-land, and adding in- 

 terest upon it, Pressler calculates that a pine wood, managed with a view to 

 felling it when eighty years old, would yield one-eighth of one per cent, annual 

 profit ; a fir wood, at one hundred years, one-sixth of one per cent. ; a beech 

 wood, at one hundred and twenty years, one-fourth of one per cent. The 

 same author gives the net income of the New Forest in England, over and 

 above expenses, interest not computed, at twenty -five cents per acre only. In 

 America, where no expense is bestowed upon the woods, the value of the an- 

 nual growth has generally been estimated much higher. 



According to the tables in Capt. Walker's Reports on Forest Management, 

 the annual " yield " of productive forests in Germany is from 20 to 84 cubic 

 feet to the acre. 



Forest-trees are often planted in Europe for what may be called an early 

 crop. Thus in Germany acorns are sowu and the younger seedlings cultivated 

 like ordinary field-vegetables, and cut at the age of a very few years for the 

 sake of the bark and the young twigs used by tanners. In England, trees are 

 grown at the rate of two thousand to the acre, and cut for props in the mines 

 at the diameter of a few inches. Plantations for hoop-poles, and other special 

 purposes requiring small timber, would, no doubt, often prove highly remu- 

 nerative. 



