X. THE RIGHT USE OF LAND 



FORESTRY VS. AGRICULTURE AND RANGE. 



a. Nature of land. Since the area of land can not be increased 

 and since land can not be moved from place to place, the occupancy 

 of land, as by a farmer, is monopolistic, and the right use of the 

 land is important in fact, fundamental to the welfare of any people. 

 That a farmer should have a duty, not only to himself, but to the 

 people or state, and that the state authorities have a duty in seeing 1 

 that the land of the state is put to its best use for present and future, 

 are modern conceptions, rapidly developing and becoming influential 

 in public economy. Even in the past, the state felt justified in taxing 

 the shiftless owner of a good piece of land, farm or city lot, not in 

 keeping with what it produced but according to what it should pro- 

 duce. Today all civilized states are spending money to devise ways 

 and means of making the land more productive. In this effort to 

 maintain and better the land it is of as much importance to select 

 the right crop as it is to give the proper care, and it is here where 

 the choice between forest and field crop asserts itself. 



b. Lands may roughly be divided into : agricultural, forest, 

 range and waste lands ; but the lines between these four classes are 

 rarely very sharp. 



On the agricultural lands, including the garden and truck lands, 

 the crop is to furnish food for people or animals. The forest crop, 

 on the other hand, serves two very distinct purposes ; it may merely 

 maintain a necessary cover on mountain lands and be useful as a 

 protective forest, or it may serve solely to produce timber and other 

 products. The importance of the forest as protective cover is so 

 great and has of late been so well recognized by the governments 

 of civilized countries that Martin in his Statik classifies lands into 

 those used to raise products and those requiring a protective cover. 



In the following paragraphs the protective forest is considered 

 as occupying absolute forest soil. 



c. The factors which determine or limit the use of land 

 are chiefly: climate, (temperature and moisture,) soil, topography 

 and population. In mountain countries small patches of valley or 

 bench land may be excellent farm land and yet not desirable for this 



