1 88 Esthetic Forestry 



point of view have taught him to combine industrial and 

 esthetic art, pleasure, and profit. 



In the smaller woodland parks and woodland portions 

 of city parks, such management is probably rarely prac- 

 ticable, hence not a forester but a park manager and 

 landscape gardener is here in place. 



A pleasure forest or park woodland is quite different 

 from the usual pleasure park. Both the objects and the 

 methods of treatment are different. The park is to give 

 pleasure mainly by its artistic elements, the forest or wood- 

 land mainly by its natural elements; the park exhibits art 

 with a superimposition of naturalness upon artificially 

 created or preserved groups of trees; the pleasure forest 

 relies upon its natural naturalness, with merely a helping 

 hand toward artistic appearance. 



Hence a let-alone policy is much more desirable in the 

 forest than is possible to permit in the park. But, while 

 the proper principle in the woodland park is to let Nature 

 take its course, that does not mean that man should not inter- 

 fere with Nature, for Nature is not always esthetic, she 

 creates many things that are not beautiful, and leaves undone 

 many that man conceives as enhancing natural beauty, 

 for Nature works without object, not even the object to 

 please. Hence the axe and saw are constantly in demand, 

 here to remove a stag-headed tree that has lost its beauty 

 and interferes with a better progeny, or an old trunk that 

 is not only ugly in its unsoundness, but breeds the enemies 

 of the healthy; there a sprawling limb needs lopping, or 

 even a healthy tree or group of trees must be invaded to 

 free a rarer component of the forest which is being choked 

 out by its sturdier competitors. There is no part of the park 

 that really requires more judgment in its treatment than 

 this natural woodland. 



