128 ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY. 



disproportionate to its actual value ; and the basis 

 of future production may be said to be a zero cap- 

 ital, neither the soil nor the prospective under- 

 growth being considered of any value, and in fact 

 no conscious forest management for new crop 

 being intended, the reproduction being left to 

 accident and nature alone and allowing perhaps 

 a return for further harvest at some later time. 

 The aspect changes when real forest manage- 

 ment, not for intermittent returns, but for annual 

 business, is contemplated, when the forest is to be 

 so regulated that every year forever a harvest is 

 to be secured in proportion to the capacity of soil 

 and species of producing it continuously, i.e. when 

 the increment only is to be harvested, which every 

 year brings. We can readily conceive what the 

 ideal condition of such a forest must be. If we had 

 determined that our crop is best harvested when 

 one hundred years of age, then, in order to harvest 

 always one-hundred-year-old timber, we must have 

 a series of one hundred stands, each one differing 

 by one year in age down to yearling growth, so 

 that each year one stand becomes ripe. It appears 

 then clear that the contents of the ninety-nine 

 stands from one to ninety-nine years old, expressed 

 in volume or value, are the wood capital ; and the 

 hundredth stand is the interest or harvest or fell- 

 ing budget (the last stand representing as well the 

 increments of one hundred years, as the one hun- 

 dred increments of one year on the whole area) 



