WOOD-LOTS ON FARMS 15 
The treelessness of the plains is due mainly to the 
fineness of the soil, or to fire and grass, rather than 
to a lack of moisture. After trees are once well 
started in the plains district, by careful cultivation 
they grow almost as well, if not quite as well, as in 
Eastern regions. 
A crude kind of silviculture may be practised in 
all regions where wood will grow and where wood 
has value. Wherever measures are employed to in- 
sure the regeneration of the forest, there silviculture 
begins. The leaving of seed trees is the first step. 
The great difference between lumbering and forestry 
is that in one there is no concern whatever for the 
young growth and the future forest, in the other 
there are always other objects in view than the mere 
reaping of the wood-crop. Intensive systems of man- 
agement, however, belong to thickly populated agri- 
cultural districts. Silviculture is the consequence of 
agricultural and industrial development. Some of 
the most productive and best managed forests of the 
world belong to large cities. In a thickly populated 
country, more or less isolated from other countries, 
forestry pays well, even on good agricultural soil. 
Soils may be divided in this regard into three distinct 
classes: The first, those which are so rocky that agri- 
culture is impossible; second, such sandy soils as exist 
in vast quantities in our South, where forestry and 
