13 



FORESTRY FROM A COMMERCIAL STANDPOINT. 



Although it is in its relation to water supply that the woodland 

 around North Watuppa Pond interests us chiefly, there is a financial 

 side to forestry which is worth noting. In Europe, trees are raised 

 and harvested like an agricultural crop ; and in time we in this country 

 must come to the same methods. There is an important difference 

 between agriculture and forestry, in that trees take many years to grow, 

 while the agricultural crop is raised and harvested in a single season. 

 This time element prevents many people from taking much interest 

 in tree culture, for they cannot see the advantage in investing in a 

 property the returns from which they may not live to enjoy. In the 

 case of a municipality or a State, however, this objection does not 

 hold, because their span of life is, theoretically at least, without limit. 

 They need have no fear that they will not live to realize on their in- 

 vestment. 



It is in Germany that forestry was first practised, and where it 

 has reached its highest development. What the results have been is 

 told in Circular No. 140 of the United States Forest Service. The 

 chapter of that document which relates to Germany is quoted in full, 

 as follows : 



GERMANY. 



The German Empire has nearly 35,000,000 acres of forest, of which 

 31.9 per cent, belongs to the State, 1.8 per cent, to the Crown, 16.1 per 

 cent, to communities, 46.5 per cent, to private persons, 1.6 per cent, to 

 corporations, and the remainder to institutions and associations. There 

 is a little over three-fifths of an acre of forest for each citizen, and, though 

 53 cubic feet of wood to the acre are produced in a year, wood imports 

 have increasingly exceeded wood exports for over forty years, and 

 300,000,000 cubic feet, valued at $80,000,000, or over one-sixth of the 

 home consumption, are now imported each year. Germany's drains on 

 foreign countries are in the following order : Austria-Hungary, 19,750,000 

 tons; Russia and Finland, 18,000,000 tons; Sweden, 508,000 tons; the 

 United States, 360,000 tons; Norway, 49,000 tons. 1 



German forestry is. remarkable in three ways. It has always led in 

 scientific thoroughness, and now it is working out results with an exact- 

 ness almost equal to that of the laboratory; it has applied this scientific 

 knowledge with the greatest technical success; and it has solved the 

 problem of securing through a long series of years an increasing forest 

 output and increasing profits at the same time. 



Like other advanced European countries, Germany felt the pinch of 

 wood shortage a hundred and fifty years ago, and, though this shortage 



1 According to the kind of wood, a ton is equivalent to from about 500 to about 1,000 

 board feet. 



