218 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



to neglect any more than he can afford to neglect his cows 

 or his corn. No modern farmer would allow his cornfield to 

 crowd itself to death in one portion, have great open spaces in 

 another and be choked everywhere with weeds. He would 

 not tolerate this in his fields, but he does in his woods. He 

 allows weed trees to choke out his more valuable species and 

 he permits scattered straggling stands of timber to encumber 

 land that should be producing five and ten times the amount 

 of wood they actually grow. 



It would be a rather poor farmer, too, who produced only 

 ten bushels of wheat to the acre on soil that was capable of 

 producing twenty-five, yet farm woodlands as a whole are to- 

 day yielding only one-half to one-third the amount they could 

 be made to produce if given a little management and care. 

 From one standpoint, this is not surprising, for after all the 

 woodland owner is a farmer, not a forester. His chief concern 

 is with his agricultural crops. Yet, the following of a few prac- 

 tical fundamental principles would allow him to double and 

 treble his wood crop. 



The neglect of farm woodlands is commonly brought about 

 by the fact that many farmers do not realize the value of the 

 products from their forests. When a farmer sells his trees or 

 fence posts, he may get less than one-tenth of what they are 

 worth and when he uses them he often uses one species where 

 another would be more durable and economical. Quite natur- 

 ally all this tends to make him value these products too lightly. 

 The tale is told of a farmer who sold a black walnut tree for 

 fifty dollars. It seemed a very fair price to him and he was 

 well content with the bargain. The buyer felled the tree at a 

 cost of fifteen dollars and without moving it sold the logs for 



