Forest Management 23 



It is unfortunate that the period of installation in conservative for- 

 estry must comprise a number of years; whilst other investments (e, 

 g., a livery) can be fully installed in the course of a few weeks or a 

 few months. 



ad B: Whosoever has traveled in recent years through Germany with 

 an eye to the forest can not be in doubt that every state and 

 every county offers innumerable sites at which conservative 

 forestry can be conducted as a remunerative business. In- 

 deed, economic sites are at hand in Germany wheresoever 

 the trees do not happen to occupy farming soil. 



Such was not the case in Germany two hundred years ago; 

 and such is not the case in Russia, Canada and the United 

 States today. 



Economic sites are those where stumpage values range 

 high; where natural reproduction is easy; where the danger 

 of fires is small; where the land is unfit for agriculture; 

 where forest taxes are low. 



These conditions prevail, particularly, in the pineries of 

 the Coastal Plains and in the hardwood forests of the higher 

 Appalachian region. 



It must be clearly understood that these conditions did not 

 or did not all prevail some 20 years ago; further, that the 

 absence of such conditions in the West anno 1907, does not 

 render conservative forestry in the West for all times im- 

 possible. 



It is unfortunate, indeed, that the majority of these condi- 

 tions arises only at a very late hour, to-wit, invariably after 

 the general disappearance of the primeval woods. 



No man in the United States has had, so far, sufficient con- 

 fidence in conservative lumbering to postpone the tapping of 

 his primeval woods until the "economic site" for conservative 

 lumbering had locally arisen. 



The man who does will never live to regret his confidence. 



CHAPTER IV METHODS REGULATING THE YIELD 

 IN WOOD AND TIMBER 



The question as to the amount of timber which might be removed 

 annually without reducing the growing stock (the main investment) 

 has occupied the minds of foresters since many centuries. European 

 governments prescribe definite methods by which the yield of a forest 

 is to be regulated. The family laws governing entailed property do 

 likewise. For America, at the present moment, these methods will find 

 application in rare cases only. A sustained vield in virgin forests con- 

 taining large numbers of idling trees is an economic absurdity.- Pufp 



