Forestry in the United States 



of grain, and its value when cut and marketed is beyond belief 

 to us whose standard of heavy production has been "the virgin 

 forest." 



The plan followed in the administration of these highly 

 specialised forests is to cut a certain acreage clean every year, and 

 replant it. The years required for a crop to mature is the basis 

 of the rotation system. By the time the whole forest is cut over 

 the first plot has a second crop ready to harvest. Most of the 

 German forests are of pine and spruce, with an average rotation 

 period of eighty to one hundred years. 



One-quarter of the land in Germany is forest. Not much- 

 of this land is continuous in one great wooded section of the 

 country, but is scattered in smaller forests among the thickly 

 settled districts. Each has its force of workers, its sawmill and a 

 ready market for all the forest products. It is said that the 

 thinnings and prunings of these forests pay most of the cost of the 

 labour put upon them while they are growing. Even twigs are 

 used, bound into fagots or made into charcoal and sold as fuel. 

 Mushrooms and truffles are gathered in these forests. The 

 leafage furnishes fodder for cattle in certain broad-leaf woods, as 

 those of linden and maple. 



The city of Zurich in Switzerland has owned a forest for one 

 thousand years. It has been so carefully regulated that it has 

 furnished a definite amount of timber each year for six hundred 

 years and is to-day in better condition than ever before. Its 

 plan of management has not changed in all that time. As early 

 as the year 1300 the peoples of northern Europe applied to their 

 forests the principles of rational forestry, while southern Europe 

 ignored these principles, and is still suffering from this folly. 



Extensive forestry, adopting improved methods of handling 

 wooded tracts, without greatly increasing the cost of management, 

 is the type of forestry American conditions call for at present, 

 in most sections. In special regions intensive forestry in con- 

 junction with agriculture is justified. The experimental stage 

 will gradually bring us to more intensive methods, but it will be 

 a long, slow evolution. We have seen much destructive lumber- 

 ing, but forestry is just begun, here and there. Over the bulk 

 of the country, people have never heard of forestry. 



The Government has 60,000,000 acres of land in national 

 parks and reservations, set apart since 1890. In parks all lumber- 



458 



