SOME POPULAR MISCONCEPTIONS 

 CONCERNING FORESTRY 



How They May Be Rectified and Turned 

 to the Advantage of the Forest Movement 



BY 

 LESLIE HARRISON 



DERSONS familiar with the true the United States Forest Service seeks 



* ' significance of the forest move- to inculcate is that trees are for use, 



men.t in the United States have fre- and all of the efforts of the service 



queptly been amused and sometimes are directed, not toward hoarding the 



disappointed at certain manifestations trees, but toward making them of the 



of popular misconceptions of the greatest use to the greatest number of 



principles of forestry. It is even true people for the greatest possible time, 



that" individuals and organizations, There is an actual analogy between 



with earnest and zealous desires to banking and forestry, in so far as the 



foster a campaign in which they have bankers and the forester alike want 



gre%t belief, are prone to mix extrane- their wealth used, and in the use to 



ous? notions of esthetics or sentiment grow in quantity and value, 



to the exclusion of fundamental econo- Let us take two homely examples 



mic 1 principles. The notion, at one which will represent the different 



time almost prevalent, that a forester points of view of the beautiful and the 



lived in the woods and wore a suit useful, or the ideal and the real : 



of "Lincoln green," may be said to be An old colored man was trudging 



wholly eradicated. Yet the sentimental through the streets of Washington 



ideals are far from dead, and may be with a bundle of trimmed hardwood 



summed up in the oft-quoted "Wood- saplings, long and straight, over his 



man, spare that tree," in spite of the shoulder. As he went, he cried, not 



fact that the greater part of the effort unmusically, "Cloe's props ! Heah's yo' 



of the trained forester is directed to- cloe's props !" His intent was to ap- 



ward,, preparing his trees for the wood- praise the householders that he was 



man's ax. This is a horrifying thought vending props, whose forked ends 



to many, who feel a revolt within their were to be placed beneath the lines 



souls that a tree which has been de- when sagged down by the weight of 



cades or centuries in the growing may wet garments. 



be cut down and utterly "destroyed" A pleasant appearing woman called 



within a few hours. They picture in to him from her doorway. With ex- 



their minds the forest monarch forced pectations of a sale he hastened to- 



to succumb to the blows of mere and war d her. When he came near enough 



puny man, devoid of poetic ideals and to be within range of her voice, which 



with no conception of the marvels of proved to be earnest and vibrant, not 



nature or the immutability of time. t o say militant, he heard words like 



There is a lack of the power to dis- these : 



tinguish between the set of facts af- "See here, Uncle! What do you 



fecting the individual tree and the mean by cutting down those beautiful 



complex and very different set of facts straight young trees? Don't you know 



concerning the forest, or the tree as that if you had not destroyed them 



a part of the forest. The lesson that they would have lived to wax strong 



