42 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF NEW JERSEY. 



growth, and neglecting to thin out the growing trees where the 

 stand is too thick. It would seem to be almost possible, with 

 proper management, to obtain all the fuel and other small 

 wood needed in the State by thinning out and pruning, 

 without at all encroaching upon the normal yield of mer- 

 chantable timber. The young growth nearly always comes 

 up much too thick to allow the choicest of the trees to 

 attain their maximum rate of growth and normal size. Many 

 of the wood-lots attached to the farms of the State now contain 

 fine stands of merchantable timber after having for perhaps a 

 century or more yielded the fuel and fencing needed on the 

 farm. It is significant in this connection that Mr. Pinchot's 

 surveys give a yield of 7,500 feet, board measure, for second- 

 growth pine 80 years old, and only 6,631 board feet for original 

 forest from 100 to 200 years old. We have also much testimony 

 of forest owners indicating a slow gain in volume of wood per 

 acre after 40 years of age is reached, but against this there is 

 plenty of evidence of the rapid growth of individual trees. If 

 merchantable lumber is sought, therefore, the moral would seem 

 to be not to cut thrifty trees until they have attained a diameter 

 of at least 18 inches, but to cut out the larger mature trees, and 

 the small, stunted ones or the inferior species, thus leaving the 

 healthful and valuable trees forty or fifty years old room to 

 grow. Under these improved conditions such trees may easily 

 more than double their volume in 10 years, and quintuple it at 

 the age of 80 years. 



It must be confessed, however, that in this State a crop of 

 railroad ties or telegraph and trolley poles may be often cut 

 when the timber is 40 years old to yield a considerably larger 

 return per acre, and, considering the period of growth, a very 

 much larger return annually than can be had by waiting 80 

 years for a crop of merchantable lumber. Thus, if 10,000 board 

 feet of logs per acre will bring at the saw-mill $12 per thousand, 

 or $120 in all, only 60 poles, bringing $2 each at the nearest 

 railroad station, will yield a like amount per acre and double 

 the annual return, and will much more surely be had from a 

 forest 40 y^ars old than will the merchantable logs at 80 years. 

 Indeed, it ought to be quite as probable that the crop of poles 

 would be double these figures, and the consequent annual return 



