FOREST CONDITIONS. 335 



fore, is not yet appropriated to any particular 

 use, being wild lands, waste, or under forest. 



The acreage given above would indicate a for- 

 ested area of not exceeding 650 million acres, 

 namely, the 900 million acres as given above, less 

 the improved farm area in the forest country, which 

 amounts to about 250 million acres ; but it should 

 be well understood that this represents merely 

 woodlands, areas covered with woody growth, 

 which must be very considerably reduced if we 

 apply the economic point of view and include only 

 areas that contain or can without human aid prod- 

 uce timber useful for the arts, — if we discuss, in 

 other words, the forest area not as a natural con- 

 dition, but as a national resource. 



Not only are large areas, especially in the west- 

 ern country, occupied by trees incapable of grow- 

 ing to valuable size or quality, but in the eastern 

 forest country there are large areas from which all 

 valuable growth has been removed by axe and 

 fire. These are sometimes turned into actual bar- 

 rens or are occupied by useless brush growth, which 

 effectually prevents the reestabHshment of valu- 

 able forest growth without human aid, and hence 

 they are for the present withdrawn from useful 

 production. 



Trustworthy statistics of the actually produc- 

 tive forest area are not in existence, although 

 figures have been presented as such by statis- 

 ticians without capacity to interpret their mean- 



