STOCK OX RAXT.KS IX NATIONAL FORESTS 209 



first. This has been the cause of much criticism and 

 fault-finding on the part of the stockmen who, looking 

 only at their own side of the case, were unable to appre- 

 ciate the reasons for keeping out all stock from certain 

 areas in some cases, and in others only certain classes of 

 stock. 



Therefore it must be borne in mind that where stock- 

 men are refused permission to take their herds into par- 

 ticular portions of National Forests it is done because 

 the grazing of stock is known to be injurious to the 

 forest growth and would defeat the object for which 

 the forests was created. 



It has always been hard for the stockman to under- 

 stand these reasons, and doubtless always will be, be- 

 cause of man's natural inclination to judge things from 

 a selfish standpoint. Moreover, the average stockman 

 is not well posted on the various questions concerning 

 the reproduction of timber, and is apt to scoff at the 

 position taken by trained foresters as to the injurious 

 effects of stock grazing over areas where reforestation 

 is desirable. 



To him a tree is an object 100 feet high and a foot or 

 more thick, and he forgets or perhaps may not know 

 that a yellow pine seedling two years old is often not 

 more than that many inches high, scarcely showing amid 

 the grass, leaves and other ground cover where it may 

 be snipped off by his sheep or trampled into a shapeless 

 wreck by some heavy-footed steer. 



There are few of the National Forests which today are 

 not open to grazing of some kind of stock in every part, 

 although on some of them it has been considered advisa- 

 ble to close certain areas to grazing of all kinds. A 

 prominent case of this kind is the watershed area about 

 the sources of the water supply of several western cities, 



