16 PRACTICAL FORESTRY 
agriculture may be combined, but where a large pro- 
portion of the area should be kept in forest; and, 
third, good soil, which is mainly agricultural, but 
where, in parts, forestry may be practised with profit. 
There are, then, absolute forest soils, soils mainly 
agricultural, and soils mainly forestal. 
True waste-lands include all those soils which are 
incapable of producing crops of any kind without 
reclamation. 
Saxony, in Germany, has an area of 1,499,300 
hectares (5,800 square miles), with a population of 
3,500,000 people, with an average of 603 per square 
mile; 27.4 per cent of this country is in forest, 
mostly spruce. The little trees are raised in nurser- 
ies, planted carefully, thinned from time to time, and 
finally, at the end of eighty years, cut clean. Then 
the area is planted again, and so on for centuries. 
This system of procedure is not essentially different 
from the production of an agricultural crop. The 
growing of willows for basketry is practically an an- 
nual agricultural crop. 
Several farmers in the plains district of our 
West have planted trees and reaped a handsome profit 
from fuel-wood and fence-posts in a few years, and 
have, at the same time, protected their orchards and 
produced fruit which would have been impossible 
without the shelter which the trees afforded. 
