38 ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY. 



Sweden with 400,000,000 cubic feet ; these export- 

 ing countries, with additional small exportations 

 from India and South America, supply the 1,400,- 

 000,000 cubic feet which Europe imports, and for 

 which she pays ^200,000,000. 



For the United States the available timber ready 

 for the axe has been estimated variously at from 

 1,380,000,000,000 to 2,300,000,000,000 feet B.M., 

 corresponding to 35 to 50 years' requirements, 

 which, if only a distant approach to the truth, im- 

 presses the need of careful husbanding and attention 

 to reproduction. 1 



If one would wish to know what the needs of a 

 people for wood supplies is (when there is no ex- 

 travagance permissible, and when every stick is 

 used down to the brush, and when coal is not so 

 plentiful as to supplant all firewood), the figures 

 for Germany, which possesses unusually good sta- 

 tistics to make such calculation possible, furnish a 

 good basis. 



Its 50,000,000 people live on 133,000,000 acres 

 of land, — I on 2| acres as against i on 26 acres in 

 the United States, — hence forest growth is mostly 

 confined to the poorer soils, which are not fit for 

 agriculture. From their 35,000,000 acres of such 

 forest growth — | acres per person — the Germans 



1 Many foolish assertions regarding existing wood supplies in the 

 United States and Canada, which are rehearsed by pseudo-statis- 

 ticians to show inexhaustible supplies, are not worthy of considera- 

 tion. 



