INSPECTION AND REVISION 2OI 



down millions of twigs and branches, hundreds of trees. Each 

 season brings its growth and adds thousands of cords of wood, and 

 allows insect and fungus to multiply and destroy. To keep properly 

 informed, plan and work intelligently with such an enormous crop, 

 it is not sufficient to make an examination this year, prepare a plan 

 and expect to follow it indefinitely. A single, intelligent cutting 

 over of a hardwood property in Northern Michigan would change 

 the conditions of reproduction, composition, growth, and decay so 

 that the forest would hardly resemble the old wild woods, and what 

 seemed true and advisable before, would no longer be so after a 

 twenty year period. These facts have been recognized for centuries, 

 and as soon as income from the forest permitted a proper care, 

 these facts were emphasized and the care of the forest shaped in 

 keeping with their importance. "A proper division, orderly se- 

 quence in cutting, and frequent revision of the plan, are far more 

 important than a mere calculation of the permissible amount of 

 timber to cut" is a statement of Cotta, and practically repeated by 

 the. best authorities of the last fifty years. In Europe, with orderly, 

 well established forest business the revision comes every ten or 

 twenty years.* This revision examines the property in all its parts, 

 and re-writes detail and general report, and prepares a new set of 

 general plans as well as detail plans. 



In our country, in new wild wood enterprises, there is need for 

 more. Diligent effort should be made to increase amount and 

 accuracy of the information, and this should be utilized, records of 

 information amplified and corrected, and the plans, both general 

 and detail, corrected and modified in keeping with this added 

 knowledge. 



But beyond this, there should be set a definite period, when a- 

 systematic examination is made, whether in one year or several, the 

 whole body of information worked over and corrected, and the 

 general plans entirely re-written. 



3. Who should make the plan? In German State Forests this 

 work, (in the past) has been done by a special office which revised 

 the plans of one forest or revier after another and aimed to get 

 around to all of them once every ten or twenty years. The suppo- 



* The so-called "Zwischen revision" or intermediate revision is not here 

 considered. 



