228 



FORESTRY INVESTIGATIONS U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



including maintenance of nurseries, seed and plant purchases, as well as planting, amount to only 

 12 cents an acre per year, or 1.8 per cent of the gross income, while for the last twenty years more 

 than twice this sum has been expended for construction and improvement of roads, the great 

 value of which are nowhere more fully recognized than in busy Saxony. 

 The financial results are exhibited in the following table: 



General financial reunite in Hie St<iti-foren(n of Saxony. 



The extraordinary results indicated in the above table can not entirely be credited to the 

 increase of wood prices and the general depreciation of money during this century; they are 

 primarily the monetary expression of the improvements indicated in the previous tables; they 

 mean increased sales, and sales of older, larger, and better material. 



When it is considered that Saxony has taken in about $190,000,000 during the last fifty years 

 from a small area of rough lands (left waste in many countries, even in Europe), a tract of land 

 half the size of a good county in Wisconsin, the great advantage of a careful treatment of forest 

 areas must become clear to everyone. Considering the net income as the interest of the value of 

 the forest lands at the prevailing 3 per cent rate, the table shows that scientific care has increased 

 the value of these poor mountain lands from $100 to $150, whereas their deforestation would quickly 

 convert them into poor alpine pastures which would bankrupt their owners at $10 an acre. The 

 table also shows clearly that it is not accident, not merely a general improvement of the country, 

 but that it is careful, systematic work which has led to these improvements. When Saxony spent 

 only $1 on each acre of forest laud she received only $1.54 net income; when she spent $2.39, her 

 net income was more than doubled, reaching during the ten years ending 1893 $4.37. 



The following figures illustrate the nature and relative importance of the expenses per acre 

 as compared with the income, as well as the prices obtained for the material : 



From the above it appears that the prices of wood have doubled since 1817, but that during 

 the last twenty five years they have remained practically constant. Part of this advance is due 

 to the general advance of prices, but part also to the improvement of the material sold. The 

 advance in the expenditure for administration since 1846 is due both to the advance in wages and 

 salaries generally (seen also in the advance of cutting expenses), but is also due to the greater- 

 competence of the administration. Saxony, unlike Michigan and other States of this Unoin, 

 prefers to spend the money in protecting its forest rather than saving the expense and losing the 

 property. Of special interest is also the fact that even in this intensive management, where 

 almost every acre is reforested by planting with nursery stock, the cultural operations, including 

 drainage and kindred expenses have varied only within a few cents per acre, involving during 



