THE APPRAISAL OF DAMAGES 125 



S over - - -- The trespasser, in settling the damages, thus 

 i.op n a 



" purchases " the timber separately and is given the benefit of 

 subtracting the discounted future expense of "soil rent" in re- 

 duced damages. It is now possible for the owner to obtain 

 this soil rent on another crop of timber that can be planted 

 immediately. He is not justified in collecting it in the form of 

 increased net damages. 



The subtraction of soil rent from present value of standing 

 timber in appraisal of damages is therefore a mere matter of 

 book-keeping between the owner and the trespasser, by which 

 the owner is the loser in damages, but is compensated by the 

 release of the land. 



It is evident that unless these conditions are actually secured, 

 and the land not only released from the crop but left in the con- 

 dition which would normally result from logging, such an as- 

 sumption absolutely fails to appraise the true damages, which 

 are in excess of the amount indicated. 



In European practice, the expectation value for the soil S v 

 is first computed. This value is then introduced not only in 

 determining expectation value of standing timber, but is also 

 substituted for the cost of the soil. 



The effect of using S v as the so-called "cost" of the soil is to 

 eliminate "profit" or enterpriser's gain, and to balance costs and 

 income at p per cent (127). Not only will the costs balance 

 the income at the final year, but, by formula KI, substituting 

 S v for S e , 



(C + S v + E)i .op* - (S v + ) , 



which indicates that this so-called "cost" is exactly equal to 

 expectation value of timber for any year during the growth of 

 the crop. This means that if actual cost of soil is not known, 

 or does not enter into the problem, as in the case of govern- 

 ment lands, and the returns from forestry are computed on the 

 basis of a fixed rate of interest, p per cent, throwing all "profit" 

 into terms of soil value ( 127), standing timber of a given age 



