88 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



safer to start the trees in nurseries. When these have grown 

 large enough in the nursery and are able to withstand the less 

 favorable conditions that will surround them out in the forest, 

 they are dug up, carefully packed, taken out and planted about 

 twelve hundred to the acre. But planting is a difficult and 

 costly operation and fortunately foresters are not forced to 

 rely on this method except when lands have been cut so bare 

 or burned so fiercely that nature herself is powerless to reforest 

 them within a reasonable time. 



A forest that has not yet been cut presents a quite different 

 problem to the forester. Usually trees of all sizes and ages are 

 growing there and the forester's task is to take out all trees 

 large enough for cutting, that can be spared. Here and there 

 he may leave a thrifty tree to cast seed and fill up with seed- 

 lings the bare spots left by the removal of their companions. 

 Even though, already, there are many small seedlings spring- 

 ing up, some seed trees are usually left. For seedlings are so 

 easily injured that drought or even the lightest type of forest 

 fire destroys them. In a sense these seed trees serve as fire in- 

 surance and should flames kill the young growth about them, 

 they will provide seeds for still another crop and so eliminate 

 the costly necessity of planting. 



Some trees in this forest, usually the older ones, may be dis- 

 eased or attacked by beetles or mistletoe. These, whenever 

 possible, the forester cuts so that the healthy trees about them 

 will not be infected. 



To reduce the danger of fire, the dry, tinder-like tops and 

 branches left after logging are usually piled and later when 

 snow or rain comes, the forester causes these piles to be burned. 

 In other places where fire danger is not so great this brush is 



