CHAPTER V, 



FOREST REGENERATION AND TREATMENT. 



The timber lands of Minnesota should, as a rule, be managed 

 so as to get the greatest cash returns from them, for that only 

 is practical forestry which has this fundamental feature always 

 in view. Our virgin forests have contained, and those remaining 

 now contain, a large percentage of trees past their prime and 

 losing in value each year they stand. Such forest products 

 should be worked up as soon as a good market is found for 

 them. In virgin forests there is no increase, the annual growth 

 being just balanced by the annual decay under normal condi- 

 tions. 



The Cultivation of Trees on timber lands in this section 

 has never received much attention, and the only data as to the 

 rate of increase that we have to follow are what can be obtained 

 from the native forests, and these are for this reason only 

 approximately correct. In European countries and elsewhere 

 it has been proved by long experience that more timber is 

 grown per acre, and that the growth is much more rapid, on land 

 where some attention is given to systematic forestry than on that 

 which is left to itself, and it will seem reasonable to believe this, 

 when we consider that much of the energy of trees may be 

 expended in fierce competition with neighbors, which may 

 weaken them all and perhaps bring about unhealthy conditions, 

 and that natural forest land is generally unevenly stocked with 

 trees, many of which are rotten or otherwise defective, and 

 often with those that are not the most profitable kinds to grow. 

 In the cultivated forests unnecessary crowding is prevented by 

 judicious thinning, and the land is kept evenly and completely 

 stocked with the most profitable kinds. 



Succession of Tree Growth is an expression sometimes 

 used as though there were a natural rotation of trees on the land. 

 There is nothing of the sort. Sometimes hard woods will follow 

 pirn-, or the pine the hard woods, where the two were mixed at 



