UTAH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 181 
today is scarcely a fair sample of the class of material 
our forests are capable of producing under proper silvi- 
cultural management. Our accessible forests have suf- 
fered from being repeatedly culled of the best material 
so that in many cases inferior trees are left. Clear, 
straight-grained spruce and fir grown in the State has 
been used in the manufacture of musical instruments 
possessing excellent tone qualities, and one familiar with 
the earlier buildings erected in Salt Lake City from large 
timbers secured on the Wasatch mountains appreciates 
something of the potentiality of the forests of Utah. 
The continued prosperity of the agricultural com- 
munities is of paramount importance to the State. This 
is one of the primary aims of the Forest Service and is 
being fostered through watershed protection, timber pro- 
duction and properly regulated grazing. Watershed pro- 
tection and timber production were really the basic 
statutory reasons for establishing National Forests in 
Utah. The management plans of the Forest Service con- 
template adequate fire protection, increasing the produc- 
tivity of the present cut-cover stands, and judiciously cut- 
ting the virgin timber on a conservative basis with ample 
provision for regenerating the stand, the keynote of which 
is expressed in the fundamental principle of preserving 
the continuity of the watershed cover and still permitting 
as great a production and utilization of the timber and 
forage crops as is compatible with necessary watershed 
protection. 
It is very evident, therefore, that every acre of 
potential forest land in Utah must be adequately pro- 
tected and made to produce the greatest amount of mer- 
chantable material’ in the shortest possible time and 
improve the vegetative cover, soil conditions and the 
streamflow of the watersheds.® 
’This paper was followed by a series of lantern slides which 
illustrated more clearly what the Federal Government is actually 
doing to conserve the forests of Utah through the practice of 
forestry. 
