FOREWORD 



This handbook has been prepared in response to a 

 growing demand for information regarding our com- 

 mon forest trees. These requests are largely the 

 result of a widening appreciation that timber is a 

 marketable commodity of increasing value, and that 

 by rightly handling young timber it quickly grows 

 into a merchantable product that will add yearly to 

 the farm income as well as enhance the value of the 

 farm, both as a salable property and as a comfort- 

 able and attractive home. 



Georgia has a great variety of trees producing 

 useful and valuable wood. Timber is the best crop 

 to grow on certain soils and locations on the farm. 

 Many farms have, for example, some hillsides, or 

 worn-out gullied sandy or wet lands better adapted 

 for growing timber than any other crop. To rightly 

 utilize all the farm is a sign of good farm manage- 

 ment. 



It is natural for young people to be interested in 

 trees. Many will become farm owners of the future, 

 and a knowledge of the trees will add an interest in 

 their lives and prove to be a very material asset. 

 The County Agents, dealing as they do with both 

 the present and future owners of timberland, will be 

 aided by this manual in acquiring a better knowledge 

 of the uses and value of our common forest trees. 

 Altogether 78 trees are described, all of which are 

 native to the State. 



Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to the 

 State Foresters of Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, 

 and North Carolina for the use of portions of the 

 text and for the loan of many of the cuts of the 

 hardwoods, all of which are from original drawings 

 by Mrs. A. E. Hoyle of the United States Forest Ser- 

 vice, and to Houghton-Mifflin Company for permis- 

 sion to use cuts of conifers from Sargent's "Manual 

 of the Trees of North America." 



The rapidly increasing interest in outdoor life, 

 stimulated perhaps by good roads, the automobile, 

 the boys' club and scout movements, and the widened 

 outlook resulting from the spread of education, en- 

 courages the rational treatment of our trees and for- 

 ests. It is highly important that this be done in 

 order that our forests may continue to furnish the 

 material so essential to the maintenance of the in- 

 dustrial and social life of the State and Nation, to 

 protect our farmsteads and mountain streams, and 

 to provide places of pleasure and recreation for our 

 people. 



