220 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



a direct effect on the general forest situation. The timber 

 growth on an average acre of farm woodland with reasonable 

 care should be worth at least two dollars and often four dol- 

 lars a year. With good forest practice it should easily be worth 

 twice that. Yet, on many, indeed on most of the farm wood- 

 lands, the rate of annual growth is not one-tenth this amount. 

 The farmer is somewhat in the position of a man who, own- 

 ing a house, is content to rent it at one hundred dollars a year, 

 when with a few repairs, with a little expenditure of time and 

 money, he could rent the same house for a thousand. 



We need only review the history of any one of our farm 

 woods to learn why they are producing only a small portion 

 of their possibilities. In almost every case, most farm woods 

 were originally logged over long before the country was 

 opened up to farming. This meant that the best timber was 

 taken out and the poorer species and individuals spared. With 

 the passing of time young trees sprang up and the best of 

 these were again taken for local use, cut perhaps, to furnish 

 timbers when the farm house was built. Each year, whenever 

 material is needed for repairs, the farmer goes to his wood- 

 land and takes from it enough to meet his needs usually cut- 

 ting the best trees. So before many years pass, the woodlands 

 become little more than an area of diseased and ill-formed, 

 rejected specimens. A forest of culls and inferior species 

 in no way resembling the thrifty valuable woods they might 

 be. 



In many regions the farmer allows his cattle, horses, or sheep 

 and, worse still, his goats or hogs to graze within his wood- 

 lands. The damage they do to forests is always severe and often 

 fatal. They bruise the wood of the young growth, trample it 



