CHAPTER VIII 



ESTHETIC FORESTRY OR WOODLAND PARK 

 MANAGEMENT ' 



HE beautiful must be taken care of; the useful 

 will take care of itself." 



It is questionable whether this remark of 

 Goethe's is as true to-day as it was in his 

 time. It seems that we have entered upon a period when 

 the esthetic aspects of our surroundings occupy us almost 

 to the extent to which the old Greeks were accustomed to 

 develop them. At least, a momentum has been set up by 

 the preachers of the beautiful which bids fair to carrv us on 

 in this direction with little effort. 



Forestry as a useful occupation has struggled hard, if 

 not as yet in vain, for recognition in this country; it is prac 

 tically still an unknown art, and now we are already discuss- 

 ing esthetic forestry. Forestry is, in the first place, not one 

 of the esthetic arts, but an industrial art, the object of which 

 is similar to that of agriculture; namely, the management 

 of the soil for the production of wood crops. Yet the nat- 

 ural beauty, the sylvan charm and woodsy flavor of a forest, 

 suggest readily the esthetic element which stimulates our 

 artistic sense. Indeed, sylvan beauty is an "inevitable by- 

 product of the forest." 



Even the forester, whose business it is to grow logs rather 



' Parts of this chapter were published before in Second Report of the 

 American Park and Outdoor Art Association, i8q8. 



185 



