62 



ones ; an extension of government functions, leading to the practice of for- 

 estry by governments on a large scale. 



Meanwhile, all that can be expected from private forest owners is that 

 they may practise more conservative and careful logging of the natural 

 woods, avoiding unnecessary waste, and as far as possible paying attention 

 to silviculture, the reproduction of the crop, leaving to the future the at- 

 tempt to organize a sustained yield management. Only governments and 

 perpetual corporations or large capitalists can afford to make the sacrifices 

 which are necessary to prepare now for such a management. 



In order to secure the data upon which the felling budget may be reg- 

 ulated, a forest survey is necessary, which will embrace not only an area 

 and topographic (geometric) survey, serving for purposes of subdivision, 

 description and orderly management, but also an ascertainment of the stock 

 on hand in the various parts of the property, and of the rate of accretion at 

 which the different stands are growing. 



After having determined upon the general policy of management, with 

 due consideration of the owner's interests and of market conditions, gener- 

 al and local ; and after having decided upon the silvicultural policy, includ- 

 ing choice of leading species in the crop for which the forest is to be main- 

 tained, and silvicultural method of treatment, as coppice or timber forest, 

 under clearing system or gradual removal or selection system the most 

 important and difficult question to be solved is that of the rotation, the time 

 which is to elapse between reproduction and harvest, or the normal felling 

 age, that is, the age, or, so far as age is in relation to size, the diameter, to 

 which it is desirable to let the trees grow before harvesting them. 



There is no maturity of a forest crop as we know it in agricultural 

 crops ; wood does not ripen naturally, and trees do not even die a natural 

 death at a given period, but death is with them a gradual process of decay, 

 the result of exterior damage, of insect and fungus attacks ; trees actually 

 die by inches in most cases, and it may take hundreds of years before the 

 trunk is so weakened that its own weight or a wind-storm may lay it low. 



The question of ripeness, or the proper felling age, wherever forest' 

 growth is an object not of mere pleasure, as in a luxury forest, must be de- 

 termined by economic considerations. 



There is sense in the proposition that the felling age be determined by 

 a diameter limit below which timber is to be considered immature ; in fact, 

 the forester bases his calculations of the rotation in part, at least, upon size 

 of crop. But the proposition, frequently advocated, to restrict a forest 

 owner to an arbitrary diameter limit, below which he is not to cut his crops, 

 anywhere and everywhere, is not only unsound as an exercise of state pol- 

 icy, but also mistakes the economic questions involved in the determination 

 of that limit, and entirely misjudges the value of the limitation as far as 

 silvicultural results, the perpetuation of a valuable forest, are concerned. 

 In fact, from this last and most important point of view it might be wiser, 



