264 



Tin* worst damage of these fires is not so much to be sought in the destruction 

 of the standing timber but in the destruction of the forest tioor, by which the 

 chance for germinating of seeds and natural reforestation is annihilated, and the 

 watrr regulating capacity of the forest is destroyed. 



As t<> the amount of depredations, the following table, prepared from reports 

 of tlic Land Office, is instructive, not only in showing the enormous amounts thus 

 lost to the public treasury, compared with which the cost of a well-organized 

 administration would be a mere bagatelle, but also by corroborating the state- 

 ment that the loss is rarely recovered in the courts. 



It should also be borne in mind that the cases reported do not by any means 

 cover all cases of trespass, presumably only a small part, since the number of 

 agents to ferret out the cases are ridiculously out of proportion to the area to be 

 covered. 



DEPREDATIONS ON THE PUBLIC TIMBER DURING ELEVEN YEARS. 



(4) It ^ a ivell-know fact, demonstrated by European experience and 

 practice, that by a proper system of cutting not only can a forest be reproduced 

 without the necessity of expensive replanting and kept continuously productive, 

 but its yield per acre and year, in quantity and quality, can by proper manage- 

 ment be increased considerably beyond that of the virgin forest left without 

 management. 



The methods of management for natural reforestation, or " regeneration 

 methods," are practiced, especially in France and Germany, in broad-leaved as 

 well as coniferous forests. The cutting of the old timber is done with a view of 

 giving chance for seeds of the desirable species to sprout and for the young 

 growth to develop satisfactorily. These methods prevail especially in the 

 mountain regions, where planting would be expensive and sometimes impractic- 

 able. 



Since in the well-managed forests only such species as are valuable are 

 allowed to grow, to the exclusion of the inferior kinds, which the forester treats 

 as weeds, the composition of the forest is improved, the growth is kept at the 



* Average. 



