214 North American Forests and Forestry 



trees, seedlings and saplings, are disregarded alto- 

 gether. It stands to reason, however, that if a for- 

 est ripe for the axe has a certain value, a forest 

 that will become merchantable thirty or fifty years 

 from now must have a value likewise. It can be 

 found by taking the value the forest will have at 

 maturity and deduct therefrom what it will cost in 

 interest and running expenses to bring it to that 

 stage. In the technical language of foresters, the 

 amount so computed is called by the rather cumber- 

 some term " expectation value." To make this cal- 

 culation it is necessary, of course, to have the means 

 of telling how much lumber the forest will yield at 

 maturity. This the European forester can approxi- 

 mately ascertain by means of those yield tables 

 mentioned in a former chapter. But the American 

 timber buyer has no means of computing the amount 

 of timber his young forest will yield many years 

 hence, because yield tables have never been con- 

 structed nor the observations made on which they 

 could be based. Moreover, the ever-present factor 

 of fire renders a computation of expectation values 

 impossible with us. In Europe the possibility that 

 young timber will be destroyed before it becomes 

 merchantable is so small that it may be disregarded. 

 In the United States more or less injury from fire 

 is almost certain, and the probability of total de- 

 struction, with coniferous forests at least, is greater 

 than that it will escape. 



If cut-over timber-lands are to be assessed for 

 taxes in such a manner as to do no injustice to the 



