The Importance of Studying Forests arid 

 Caring for Them. 



N 



O SYSTEM of agriculture can be long successful 

 and profitable which ignores the necessity of culti- 

 vating trees, and which does not recognize the 

 fact that much land in every country can only be 

 made profitable by means of trees. The precepts 

 which should be often repeated to farmers are not that trees 

 produce rain or that trees are sacred objects which cannot be 

 cut without offense to man and nature. The lesson they must 

 learn, if they hope to compete with the farmers trained under 

 more enlightened systems of agriculture are that sterile, rocky, 



hilly ground cannot long be tilled profitably, and that such 

 land can only be wisely used to produce trees ; that the pastur- 

 age of domestic animals in woods, or on land only suitable 

 for the growth of trees, is an expensive and wasteful system, 

 as unsatisfactory from a pastoral point of view as it is fatal 

 to the forest ; that trees are as much out of place in the strong, 

 level lands, really suitable to permanent tillage, as cattle are 

 out of place in the woods. And they must learn, too, that 

 woodlands can only be made profitable when the same care is 

 given to the selection of trees with reference to soil and 

 climate as is bestowed upon the selection of grain and other 

 crops, and the rules which nature has established for the 

 perpetuation of forests must be studied and obeyed. 



W. A. STILES. 



53 



