ttvTSION OF KORESTKY. 32V 



may cooperate with the Bureau iu handling their forest lands. Coop- 

 eration on these terms was undertaken in order to create practical 

 examples of the conservative management of private forest lands, to 

 show its advantages over ordinary methods, both to the owner and to 

 the forest, and then by publication to spread a knowledge of the work 

 and its results as widely as possible. Areas of 200 acres and under 

 are examined, and methods of handling are advised, entirely without 

 cost to the owner. In the preparation of detailed working plans for 

 larger tracts, the owners were required to pay the traveling and field 

 expenses of the men engaged in the work, amounting to about one- 

 half the cost of the necessary studies on the ground. 



Personal examinations were made during the year of 14 timber 

 tracts and 3 wood lots in 11 States, covering 788,890 acres. Five 

 detailed working plans were made. One of these was for 100,000 

 acres of Shortleaf and Loblolly Pine in Grant, Jefferson, and Saline 

 counties, Ark., the property of the Sawyer and Austin Lumber Com- 

 pany. 



The field work necessary to this working plan occupied a party of 

 G men for six months. It included the measurement of the stand 

 upon 1,900 acres and of the rate of growth of 625 trees, with a careful 

 study of the forest, the habits of its trees, and the conditions neces- 

 sary to their successful reproduction. An investigation was made of 

 the effects of fire on the forest and the best means of preventing its 

 recurrence in the future. The effect of present methods of lumber- 

 ing was studied in order to advise those modifications which, without 

 encroaching too far upon present profits, will hasten the production 

 of a second crop upon the lumbered area. In brief, the field work 

 included a thorough expert examination of the forest and its possibili- 

 ties to serve as a basis for the best business policy in its management. 



The tract of the Sawyer and Austin Lumber Company is generally 

 favorable for practical forestry. It contains an excellent stand of 

 merchantable timber, for which there is a steady market. The log- 

 ging and transport of timber are not expensive. The reproduction of 

 the pines, and particularly of the Loblolly, can be assured cheaply 

 under effective protection against fire. 



Another detailed working plan was made for a tract of 52,000 acres, 

 in Dunklin and Pemiscot counties, Mo., owned by the Deering Har- 

 vester Company. This forest, situated in the moist and fertile valley 

 of the Mississippi, contains valuable hardwoods, particularly oak, ash, 

 and hickory, in mixture with trees of little or no commercial impor- 

 tance. In addition to the good opportunity which it offers for con- 

 servative forest management on a sound financial basis, this tract 

 presents at least one exceedingly interesting and important silvicul- 

 tural problem, namely, to foster, by cutting, the reproduction of the 

 valuable hardwoods against that of the trees of little commercial 

 value with which they occur in mixture. 



A third large tract for which a working plan was made during the 

 fiscal year was one of 1,600 acres near Lenox, Mass., the property of 

 Hon. William C. Whitney. It is a second-growth hardwood forest 

 from 15 to 40 years old, from which the first growth has been entirely 

 removed. The problem here was to improve the quality of the future 

 mature stand by the removal of worthless kinds and of stunted, 

 unpromising, and malformed trees. It has been found that these 

 cuttings pay, and they will consequently be continued throughout this 

 forest. 



A fourth working plan was completed for 60,000 acres of spruce, 



