PREFACE 
THE owners and operators of Spruce lands in the 
Eastern United States will find within the covers of 
this little book a collection of facts and figures which is 
intended first of all to be of practical use. The infor- 
mation it contains is the product of a prolonged in- 
vestigation conducted throughout with that intention. 
If its results have any merit, therefore, it must be be- 
cause they are capable of assisting American lumber- 
men to get better returns from their investments in 
Spruce lands through conservative lumbering and suc- 
cessive crops than they could by considering the pro- 
ductiveness of these lands as of merely temporary in- 
terest. In the attempt to be of use in this way, some 
departures from established methods of study and state- 
ment have been necessary. Such changes are inevi- 
table. As yet forestry in America is young. In its 
progress toward maturity it must develop new meth- 
ods to meet the unfamiliar conditions with which it has 
to deal. Rules and practices which were devised with- 
out reference to American forests cannot always be 
counted on to fit American needs. Perhaps nothing 
has done more to retard the progress of forestry in 
America than the disregard of its intimate and friendly 
relation to lumbering—a relation which was almost 
wholly overlooked for years after the advocates of forest 
ili 
