THE RESERVED FOURTHS. 263 



fulfilment of which alone would allow of the standing crop being 

 drawn upon in case of unforeseen necessity. The kind of treat- 

 ment here suggested, consisting as it does of successive Thinnings, 

 which permit of the high forest trees being exploited at a compara- 

 tively early age, was not known before in France. It is easy of 

 application, and it is moreover frequently adapted for private wood- 

 lands constituted as high forest. 



Numbers of people are inclined to imagine that the money 

 value represented by no matter what high forest necessarily in- 

 creases only at a very low rate per cent. But the rate of profits 

 on investments in forest property, far from being allowed to regulate 

 the working of communal forests, is for the most part an indetermi- 

 nate quantity. It is certain that if any one purchases a copse work- 

 ed on a short Rotation and yielding a fixed income, he can calculate 

 the profits he will derive by comparing the amount of that income 

 with the amount of the purchase money. Neverthless there is often 

 very great advantage, even as regards the rate of profits, in adopting 

 rather long Rotations. But when we have to deal with high forest 

 trees, who is in a position to say that it yields such and such a rate 

 of profits ? When we preserve a tree, it is not for one or two years, 

 but for 25 years at least. The rate of profits then depends on the 

 present value of that tree and that which it will acquire at the end 

 of 25 years. Now this latter is unknown, and, in consequence, so 

 is the rate of profits. 



The point to establish, one that leaves no room for doubt after- 

 wards, is the growth of the standing timber concerned — its increase 

 in diameter, for instance, whether it is slow or rapid. We fell a 

 tree, and examine the thickness of the youngest annual rings. If we 

 find that it is one-tenth of an inch, it follows that the tree has been 

 gaining in diameter at the rate of one-fifth of an inch every year or 

 5 inches in 25 years. Under these circumstances, a beech tree with a 

 diameter of 15 inches would measure 20 inches at the end of that 

 time ; while its volume will have more than doubled, since the cubical 

 contents of a tree obviously increases as the square of the diameter. 

 The rate of profits derived from a forest composed of such trees would 

 be 3 per cent., if the price of a cubic foot of middle-sized timber were 

 the same as that of a small log, and if, moreover, it were taken for 

 granted that prices remained stationary durbg the whole period of 25 



