12 



Canadian Forestry Journal, January 1912. 



most part cut clean and replanted. The 

 trees are allowed to grow to an age of 110 

 to 125 years. The forests are gone over 

 once in five or ten years and cleaned of 

 all poor, sickly trees, and opened up where 

 the trees are too dense, so that in the older 

 stands the trees practically are perfect, 

 standing straight and a joy to any lover 

 of good timber. The amount of timber per 

 acre in these hundred-year-old stands is sim- 

 ply enormous, and the amount which has 

 to be cut into fuel or cheap woods is very 

 small, rarely over ten per cent of the total 

 yield. All timber is cut in winter, peeled 

 at once and hauled with team. All work 

 is done by contract. The care which these 

 forests receive is such that when I asked the 

 forester about fires he looked at me in sur- 

 prise and simply said, "We have no fires.'* 



'As a matter of fact, in all my travels 

 last summer I did not see one acre of woods 

 which showed any signs of ever having been 

 touched by fire. When one compares this 

 with Michigan, where it is hard to find an 

 acre that does not show such signs one won- 

 ders where the trouble lies. Here they see 

 to it that law really is law. Eoaming in 

 the woods is forbidden; people are expected 

 to mind their business. 



'To my great surprise I found that even 

 here, in a good agricultural district, the for- 

 est is being extended at the expense of agri- 

 cultural lands. For example, a farm of 170 

 acres, which is large for this country, had 

 been in possession of one family for over 

 four hundred years, and was offered for 

 sale. After several years it was bought by 

 the king as a private property and was re- 

 forested. The land cost only $60 an acre, 

 contained a gravel pit valued at $2,500, and 

 was in good farming condition. Similar con- 

 ditions were found in Baden, the explana- 

 tion being that farm land does not produce 

 the income which can be had from forests. 

 Eenting farms is generally by cash rentals 

 of $2 to $3 an acre, while the forests make 

 a secure net cash rental of over $10. Since 

 this is an old country, fortified by the Eo- 

 mans, well settled in the days of Charle- 

 magne and densely populated today by one 

 of the most frugal, industrious peoples in the 

 world, these facts will serve to show how 

 utterly nonsensical are the claims of op- 

 ponents, who would have us believe there is 

 no room for forests, since all land is needed 

 for farming. 



'I visited the forestry school at the Uni- 

 versity of Tuebingen, several districts of the 

 Black Forest in Wurttemberg, also a district 

 of hardwoods in the Ehine valley near Stras- 

 burg. In this latter district the black wal- 

 nut is planted extensively on fertile valley 

 land near the city, again a sign that forests 

 have a place, even in fertile regions. In 

 the Black Forest districts I found many in- 

 teresting facts. In the higher locations — 

 2,400 feet altitude, with rainfall of over 



seventy inches, heavy snows and much frost 

 — agriculture is on the decline and even the 

 farmers are planting forests. Some of the 

 villages and towns own large forests. 

 Bayersbrom has 6,000 acres of woods, worth 

 over $200 an acre. Here the fir and spruce 

 predominate. The timber is cut in summer 

 and is peeled. The bark of spruce is sold 

 as tanbark at about $4 a cord. The forests 

 are reproduced naturally, but everywhere a 

 little planting is done to prevent delay. The 

 stands of timber are certainly fine. Near 

 Obendorf I saw stands which contain over 

 20,000 cubic feet of timber an acre. Since 

 this stuff is worth fully 15 cents a cubic 

 foot, we have values of $1,200 to $3,000 an 

 acre. But this is not rubbish or old pine 

 stubs. It is a body of timber produced 

 by careful treatment and decent protection 

 against all kinds of injury. In such stands 

 there is often not a single tree that needs 

 culling on account of crook or other defect. 

 A fine telephone pole sixty feet long, with 

 ten inches as its upper diameter, is cheaper 

 here than in Ann Arbor, Mich. While gen- * 



erally the small forests of farmers are not in .|| 

 especially good condition, several of the pri- * 

 vate forests about Freudenstadt are fine and 

 these farmers are becoming really timber 

 growers and are growing ridi.' 



THE MOUNTAIN PINE BEETLE. 



As a result of experiments carried 

 out under the direction of the De- 

 partment of Agriculture of the Unit- 

 ed States, a method of combatting 

 the ravages of the mountain pine 

 beetle has been found, according to 

 a recent departmental report. The 

 experiments were undertaken in 

 northeastern Oregon, where beetles 

 had worked havoc over more than 

 one million acres of valuable timber 

 land. The pest had destroyed more 

 than 8,000 trees. 



In conjunction v^dth the forest ser- 

 vice and private owners of timber, 

 the department's experts confined 

 their efforts to an area of 20,000 

 acres with such success that while 

 surrounding territory suffered heav- 

 ily the experiment ground's loss was 

 80 per cent. less. The march of the 

 beetle to the south and southeast, it 

 is believed, will be checked as a result 

 of the knowledge gained from the 

 tests which have been continued over 

 a space of nearly five years. 



