1903 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



121 



that of ordinary methods, and the im- 

 provement in the productiveness and 

 value of the land much more than makes 

 up for the slight sacrifice of profit. Ex- 

 perience has shown that in most cases 

 where it will pay to cut at all, it will 

 pay to cut scientifically. This is for the 

 first operation. In the long run the 

 conservative treatment is certainly the 

 more paying. 



The points essential to forestry are 

 that the forest as a forest (either for 

 the production of wood or the ornament 

 and protection of the ground) should 

 have a permanent value to its owner, 

 and that some sort of intelligent super- 

 vision should be possible. In a region 

 like New England, where there is nearly 

 everywhere a demand for firewood and 

 small timber, the difficulty is not to dis- 

 pose of the product, but to make suie 

 that it is properly taken out. The ne- 

 cessity of selecting some trees and leav- 

 ing others appears to the average chop- 

 per foolish and troublesome, and long 

 habit has caused him to consider the 

 seedling and sapling growth, which is 

 the nucleus of succeeding generations, 

 merely " brush," and to clear it out as 

 such, partly to make chopping easier 

 and partly because it is the custom. 

 That these short-sighted methods are 

 not necessary for profitable cutting has 

 been abundantly proved on a number of 

 well-managed woodlots. On one large 

 tract where extensive thinnings are be- 

 ing made according to a scheme advised 

 by the Bureau of Forestry, the chopping 

 is costing no more than it did when the 

 wood was cut without method. The 

 only additional elements of cost are the 

 marking of trees to be cut, the neces- 

 sary supervision, and the fact that it 

 takes more area than before to yield a 

 cord of wood. On smaller tracts, when 

 the owner himself shares or superintends 

 the woods work, these elements are re- 

 duced to practically nothing. Practice 

 and the ability to tell one tree from 

 another, and seedlings from "brush," 

 make discriminating cutting far easier 

 than the inexperienced seem to think. 

 What is chiefly required for the success 

 of forestry in these accessible hardwood 

 forests is knowledge of the results to be 

 desired and the ways of bringing them 



about. In other words, either the man 

 who does the work or the man who su- 

 perintends it should know the trees and 

 the general principles of improvement 

 and reproduction cuttings. 



This knowledge the Bureau of For- 

 estry intends to furnish to the woodlot 

 owner in a forthcoming bulletin, which 

 is to embody in simple, untechnical 

 form the important rules and consider- 

 ations for the treatment of woodlands. 

 The material, which has been gathered 

 and worked up in collaboration with 

 Professor H. S. Graves, Director of the 

 Yale Forest School, describes cuttings 

 already successfully applied to actual 

 stands in New England, and its chief 

 usefulness lies in the graphic description 

 of thirty special cases taken from vari- 

 ous localities, so as to represent typical 

 forest conditions throughout the region. 

 In each of these cases the stand was 

 sketched in the woods as it would be 

 seen from the edge of a slashing. The 

 trees were drawn only in outline, but 

 the shapes of the crowns and their rel- 

 ative positions, as well as the relations 

 of the stems, were all diagrammatically 

 shown. The name of each species was 

 printed on the crown, and any serious 

 defect, such as a dead top, the girdling 

 of borers, or unsoundness, was conven- 

 tionally represented. In the finished 

 diagrams there will thus be depicted a 

 sample strip of each sort of stand, 

 roughly reproducing the actual problem 

 on the ground. The diagrams are clas- 

 sified according to the sort of cuttings 

 they are to illustrate, whether for re- 

 production or improvement, and the 

 trees which require to be cut in each 

 are marked with a heavy line. The 

 reasons why these trees are cut and the 

 results to follow are briefly explained 

 in a subjoined paragraph. In this way 

 it is hoped to make clear, with practi- 

 cally no technical discussion, how the 

 main principles are applied in practice. 

 The question whether or not any given 

 measure would pay for itself could, of 

 course, only be treated in general, since 

 the situation varied greatly from place 

 to place. In most cases an owner could 

 decide this for himself. The main pur- 

 pose of the bulletin is to show how the 

 woods are to be cut. 



