FORESTRY INVESTIGATIONS U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



of this century, but they aud their successors have not only occupied a farm urea of 80,000,000 

 productive acres, but they have also dotted the open country with groves, smaller or larger, either 

 by planting them or, by keeping out fire and cattle, aiding the natural reforestation. 



PRESENT CONDITION. 



The requirements of the settlement of agricultural lands, then, have necessitated the removal 

 of the forest from about Ii50,000,000 acres. But in addition two other causes lire and wood con- 

 sumption have reduced the really forest-bearing area still further. While the larger amount of 

 wood products is not secured by clearing lands, but mostly by culling the virgin forest of the 

 best kinds aud the best individual trees, so that at least a woodgrowth more or less valuable 

 continues to occupy the ground, many of these areas are so severely culled that they are of no 

 economic value. Especially when, as is often the case, iires follow the operations of the lumber- 

 men, not only the old timber and the young growth, but the mold, the fertility of the soil, a 

 product of centuries of decaying vegetation, is also destroyed and the ground is occupied by weeds 

 and useless brush. If left to itself and no tires recurring, these wastes may again become valu- 

 able forests, but this recuperation will take generations if not centuries before an economic value 

 attaches to the area. Thus in Wisconsin, as we will see further on, at least 4,000,000 acres have 

 been turned into veritable desert by these processes. 



It will be readily understood that if we consider forests from the economic point of view as wood- 

 lands either containing or promising for the future wood of useful kinds, not merely tree weeds and 

 brush, we must classify and distinguish with more precision than merely into farm and forest. 



The farm areas are ascertained by the census. But of the balance of areas we have no precise 

 knowledge as to its condition, whether virgin and valuable forest growth or a useless and more 

 than useless brush growth occupies them, preventing reestablishment of desirable growth, or 

 whether it is waste, but open country. 



Not only should we know the timber areas Avhich contain supplies ready for the ax and for 

 present consumption, but in the so-called second growth we must distinguish the aieas which 

 promise new supplies of value and those brush lands which are not only not growing a new timber 

 crop, but, on the contrary, prevent the growth of timber and will for generations to come be mere 

 waste lands. 



The census authorities have never had a conception of these differences, hence we are without 

 precise knowledge of the condition of things. It is to be hoped that for the next census, in the 

 year 1900, provision will be -made to arrive at this knowledge with some precision, under such a 

 plan as outlined in Bulletin 1C of the Division of Forestry, the results of which for the State of 

 Wisconsin appear at the end of this report. 



Meanwhile, a canvass of the available information has enabled the Division of Forestry to 

 estimate the present conditions (1893), as represented by the following tabulation, giving the 

 approximated relation of improved land, forest, and waste land: 



Improred and forest land in the United States. 



