128 OUR VANISHING FORESTS 



cattle is helpful, but during the early stages the 

 entry of any animals which may feed upon the 

 young seedlings or trample them down must be 

 prevented. Where the soil is very hard, however, 

 the re-establishment of a forest often requires a 

 tilling of the soil similar to that necessary for any 

 other crop. On the shores of the Chesapeake some 

 potato raisers turn this to their own advantage. 

 The farmer selects a location where pines have 

 been growing, carefully plows under the needles and 

 litter as a fertilizer, and from this soil obtains 

 several crops of sweet potatoes. He then seeds the 

 land to pines once more, and after a time repeats 

 the process. In Germa»ny an alternate rotation of 

 vegetable and wood crops is very common. 



The idea of operating a wood-lot or a larger 

 forest upon the crop theory depends solely upon 

 regarding the existing forest as capital and the 

 wood production derived tkerefrom as an interest 

 or gross return. The only way to increase the yield 

 of such a forest is to increase the capital or change 

 it to a different species. It is not always easy to 

 determine how to regulate the cutting so as not to 

 impair the capital or undercut the yield, but the 

 elementary idea is simple. Supposing a tree will 

 reach the desired size in forty years, if a farmer 

 plants one acre of land every year, after the fortieth 



