72 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



February 



pressed a judgment to which the 

 trained forester will give enthusiastic 

 assent. It is a good thing, indeed, that 

 sentences so significant should have 

 been written by a lumberman whose 

 opinion carries weight and that they 

 should have been given permanence in 

 our forest literature: 



"The beginning of the Twentieth 

 Century marked, with approximate 

 accuracy, an epochal period in the tim- 

 ber and lumber history of the United 

 States of America. Until that time the 

 country, in its use of forest products, 

 had been drawing upon a surplus, but 

 thereafter a continuance of production 

 on the former scale, without care for 

 the perpetuation or reproduction of 

 the forests, necessarily would draw 

 upon the capital fund, so to speak, 

 with the inevitable result of a grow- 

 ing scarcity of forest products, or, to 

 be more exact, of an increasing and 

 manifest deficiency in the supply of 

 standing timber from which the pro- 

 duct must be secured." * * * The for- 

 ests were formerly, "especially during 

 the period of development up to about 

 1850, in many instances a positive det- 

 riment. Forests stood on millions of 

 acres of fertile lands which were need- 

 ed by the settler and the would-be 

 farmer, and a slow-growing crop of 

 timber was occupying land that might 

 more profitably be devoted to the pro- 

 duction of grain or other products of 

 agriculture." * * * "But the best in- 

 formed students of the subject believe, 

 after as careful investigation.^ as they 

 have been able to make, that the for- 

 est yet remaining, if operated along 

 conservative lines, would annually pro- 



duce in perpetuity an amount of for- 

 est products little, if any, more than 

 the present annual output. If that be 

 true, the United States has come to 

 the point where it can no longer be 

 lavish in its use of its wonderful tim- 

 ber resources, but must rigorously 

 conserve them. It will no longer be 

 consuming a surplus, but, except for 

 the adoption of forestry methods, will 

 be drawing upon its capital." 



That this judgment is safely on the 

 conservative side may be seen by re- 

 calling Dr. B. E. Fernow's figures, in 

 his capital book "The Economics of 

 Forestry." According to these, even 

 with the per acre annual growth of the 

 average German government forest 

 50 cubic feet our 25,000 million feet 

 of consumption would take all we 

 could grow on our estimated total pro- 

 ductive forest area of 500 million 

 acres. As it is, Dr. Fernow will not 

 allow that our untended forests are 

 growing more than one-tenth as fast 

 as this ; so that consumption is gaining 

 on present supplies at a rate which 

 would, if continued, drain them to the 

 dregs in from 40 to 50 years. 



The closing pages of the "History" 

 are made up of most useful statistical 

 tables giving-the course of timber pro- 

 duction and the use of forest products, 

 as well as a review of tariff legislation 

 affecting the lumber industry. 



Mr. Defebaugh and his publishers 

 are to be congratulated on this unique- 

 ly serviceable volume. . It is to be 

 hoped that the remaining volumes may 

 follow without too great delay, and 

 that they may not fall short of the ex- 

 pectations encouraged by this one. 



