THE USE OF THE FOREST. 



283 



in order to maintain the forest. So far as America is concerned, not 

 for a long time will planting be much used for reproduction. 



The greater portion of American woodlands is in the condition of culled 

 forests, that is, forests from which the merchantable trees have been cut, 

 leaving the younger individuals, as well as all trees belonging to unmarket- 

 able species. Even on the areas where the lumbermen have made a clean 

 cut of the original timber, new trees will come up of themselves from seeds 

 blown from the surrounding forests or falling from occasional individuals 

 left standing. (Bruncken, p. 133.) 



The usefulness of planting in America is mainly for reclaiming 

 treeless regions, as in the west, and where timber is high priced u The 



Fig-. 127. Planted White Pine, Fifty Years Old, 

 Bridgewater, Mass. U. S. Forest Service. 



area of planted timber in the Middle West aggregates many hundred 

 thousand acres, once waste land, now converted into useful woods. 3 



3 To encourage such forest extension, the Forest Service is doing much 

 by the publication of bulletins recommending methods and trees suited to 

 special regions, as, e. g., on Forest Planting in Illinois, in the Sand Hill 

 Region of Nebraska, on Coal Lands in Western Pennsylvania, in Western 

 Kansas, in Oklahoma and adjacent regions, etc. 



