106 PRACTICAL FORESTRY IN 



the idea that all forest growth is an enemy, to be destroyed on 

 general principles without calculating what actual profit 

 there is in destruction. 



Another point often overlooked in the Pacific Northwest, 

 because of our local tendency to consider the forest only as 

 something to struggle against, is the exactly opposite influence 

 of properly placed tree growth upon sale values if the pros- 

 pective buyer is from the East or from our own cities or tree- 

 less regions. Such are attracted strongly by the grove-like 

 effect of a few trees left around the house. Their desire for 

 this is as strongly ingrained as the average local resident's 

 desire for a completely free outlook to mark his victory over 

 unfriendly nature. The appeal a place makes to a buyer as a 

 pleasant home has frequently as important an influence on 

 his decision as its purely practical merits. 



His judgment of the latter, however, is also affected by his 

 earlier environment. If he has lived where farming land is 

 open, evidences of the labor of clearing are discouraging. The 

 untouched forest, being totally beyond his capacity to estimate 

 the labor its removal entails, repels him less than stumps, 

 logs, desolate burnings and like detailed evidences of the 

 work which lies before him. This is another reason why the 

 clearing of clearly fertile land may be better business than 

 the half -clearing of land perhaps best suited for forest growth 

 anyway. Again, not fully realizing the plentifulness of forest 

 products in the new locality, he may actually overestimate the 

 value of an attractive piece of forest land showing evidence 

 of the thoughtful care suggested in a preceding paragraph. 



Use of Fire 



Above all, it pays the settler in wooded regions to be careful 

 with fire. Properly directed and confined, fire is necessary in 

 clearing land. But there is no profit in allowing uncontrolled 

 fire to spread from the actual clearing to create a snarl of 

 dead, decaying and falling trees and underbrush. It is usually 

 harder to extend the clearing into such ground than into 



