PREFACE. 



The act of the New York State Legislature, passtd 

 on the 15th day of May, 1885 — which may justly be 

 considered as inaugurating a new era in the forestry 

 matters of the Empire State — directs the members of 

 the Forest Commission *' to prepare tracts or circulars 

 " of information, giving plain and concise advice for 

 " the care of wood-lands upon private lands, and for 

 " the starting of new plantations upon lands that 

 " have been denuded, exhausted by cultivation, eroded 

 " by torrents, or injured by fire, or that are sandy, 

 " marshy, broken, sterile, or waste and unfit for other 

 " use." This well-meant instruction has not, to my 

 knowledge, been carried into execution, very likely 

 because we have no literature of any importance 

 upon this subject — for forestry with us has not been 

 regarded as being a branch of rural economy worthy 

 of literary treatment, and, therefore, this field of cul- 

 ture has been left nearly untouched. 



In this limited work I have attempted to bring 

 within as small a compass as is consistent with clear- 

 ness of statement the salient points of systematic 

 forestry and its application to the restocking of de- 

 nuded wood-lands on plains and mountains. Ameri- 

 can writers on forestry have mostly confined them- 

 selves to the treatment of forest trees as single trees, 

 and not as masses of trees raised for the purpose of 

 producing crops of wood or timber. They thought 

 that forestry was an art of tree planting, destined to 

 create, by artificial sowing and planting, new forests; 

 and that, as we are still in the possession of many 

 and large natural forests, the creation of new forests 

 was to us a foreign matter. This is entirely wrong, 



