PART II. THE REPORT ON THE 

 PROPERTY. 



The preparation of a Forest Working Plan, as seen from the 

 above, involves two quite distinct tasks : 



The gathering of the Information an^l compiling this into a 

 Report on the Property. 



The making of the Plans for the Property. 



In all cases the field work of gathering the necessary informa- 

 tion is by far the greater task. In the United States with our wild 

 woods conditions the plan itself must often be left tentative, and 

 seems so crude that the whole Working Plan really appears as 

 nothing more than a survey and description of the property or a 

 report on the property, though, of course, this is not true and is- 

 merely a case of losing sight of the real object for which the infor- 

 mation was collected. Better to appreciate the conditions in the 

 United States which demand or lead to a Working Plan, and under 

 which such a Plan is worked out, and also to see more clearly what 

 such a Working Plan can and should contain and what it should 

 accomplish, it may be well briefly to review the circumstances and 

 the process of a typical American case. A tract of private property, 

 rather than a State or National forest is chosen, because these latter 

 forms of ownership involve a large organization where the making 

 of a Working Plan, now, is merely one more task in the great 

 routine of work. 



A. THE AMERICAN CASE. 



i) The assumption here is that a man in New York owns 

 forest lands in Northern Michigan ; that he is not, at present, in the 

 business of lumbering, and that he wishes to know more about the 

 property, with the possibility of converting this property into a 

 regular forest business. 



