SYLVICULTURE 



Sylviculturally. no forest requires a more minute and more 

 painstaking treatment than the primeval forest, when its conversion 

 into cultured forest is at stake. Still, the small price obtainable for 

 its products defies any attempt at a remunerative outcome of heavy 

 sylvicnltural outlays. What is the use of safeguarding or producing 

 a second growth, by sylvicnltural acts, which is devoid of any pros- 

 pective value, or which is of a value inferior to the expense re- 

 quired to safeguard it or to produce it? 



Thus, sylviculturally as well as financially it seems very fre- 

 quently best to leave the primeval wood unattended, unregenerated, 

 unconverted, for the time being. 



II. Tlie culled forest usually exists in localities where timber 

 has a higher value than in the primeval backwoods. 



Indeed, where the culling of the forest has made great progress 

 in a state or in a county, there the culled forest is getting rapidly 

 ripe for sylvicnltural treatment. 



Heavy culling merely proves a high range of stumpage prices, 

 fostered by a near-by market and by good means of transportation. 



Where the forest has been culled only of decidedly mature 

 trees, there the chances for good results are bright, financially as 

 well as sylviculturally. 



The attitude which the owner of culled forests adopts towards 

 sylvicnltural investments, necessarily depends on a diagnosis of the 

 future of the lumber industry appeiiling to him. 



III. The cultured forest is still a rarity in tne United States, 

 and will continue to be a rarity during our lifetime. 



Imagine for a moment, that the famous Black forest of Germany 

 were suddenly transferred, with its fine Spruce woods, its splendid 

 roads and its skilled laborers, into the heart of the Adirondacks! 

 Would it be wise, financially, to continue its sylvicultural treat- 

 ment as inaugurated in Germany? 



It certainly would; the logs salable in the Black Forest are 

 also salable in the Adirondacks at a good profit. And a network of 

 splendid roads would tend to cheapen transportation by exactly 

 that many cents per standard, which the stumpage itself would gain 

 per standard. 



On the other hand, that same Black Forest transferred to the 

 Pacific coast — say into tlie Olympic mountains — Avould certainly 

 prove a financial and therefore a sj'lvicultural failure. 



The better it pays to cull the forest, the closer at hand is the 

 time of the cultured forest. 



It must be kept in mind, however, that the change from the 

 culled to the cultured forest requires, aside from a market for the 

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