FOREST ECONOMY. 209 



at a given period, but death is with them a gradual 

 process of decay, the result of exterior damage, of 

 insect and fungus attacks ; trees actually die by 

 inches in most cases, and it may take hundreds of 

 years before the trunk is so weakened that its own 

 weight or a wind-storm may lay it low. It is, 

 therefore, not practicable, as has been proposed, to 

 harvest when death is approaching. Besides, the 

 poetry and the picturesqueness of the forest might 

 perhaps be subserved by leaving trees to grow 

 until they die, allowing mighty giants to mingle 

 with the younger generations, as in the virgin 

 woods of nature, until they are past usefulness ; 

 but it would be abhorrent to economic thought 

 thus to waste the energy of nature. The question 

 of ripeness, of the proper felling age, wherever 

 forest growth is an object not of mere pleasure, 

 as in a luxury forest, must be determined by eco- 

 nomic considerations. 



There is more sense in the proposition that the 

 felling age be determined by a diameter limit below 

 which timber is to be considered immature; in fact, 

 the forester bases his calculations of the rotation 

 in part, at least, upon size of crop. But the propo- 

 sition, frequently advocated, to restrict a forest 

 owner to an arbitrary diameter limit, below which he 

 is not to cut his crops, anywhere and everywhere, 

 is not only unsound as an exercise of state pohcy, 

 but also mistakes the economic questions involved 

 in the determination of that limit, and entirely 



