CHAPTER 11. FIRST PRINCIPLES. 



6. Time element in forestry. The wood-capital. 



The preliminary matters discussed in the foregoing chapter 

 having been settled, it now becomes necessary to consider the 

 manner in which a forest may best be made to operate as a 

 wood-producing and rent-yielding property, and to organise the 

 working in such a way as to make the enterprise as profitable 

 as possible. 



The distinguishing characteristic of forestry is the time 

 element. Instead of harvesting the fruit as it becomes ripe year 

 by year, as is the case in agriculture, in forestry we may have 

 to keep our trees standing for zoo, or even 200, years, before they 

 become mature. Then to ensure a proper condition of the ground, 

 to make it suitable for reproduction by seed, and to secure the 

 highest degree of productivity, it is necessary to maintain a more 

 or less close leaf-canopy over it for the space of one to two human 

 generations at least. It may be assumed that a yearly return is 

 required, unless the woodland estate is too small to make an 

 annual out-turn practicable. It may also be assumed that this 

 annual return should be constant, that is, sustained at approxi- 

 mately the same figure year by year. 



If then we have, for example, an area of 100 acres of woodland, 

 worked on a 100-year rotation, we should be able to fell each 

 year one acre of forest of one hundred years of age, which would 

 give us our equal annual yield. But in order to do this in per- 

 petuity, it would obviously be necessary to maintain standing 

 the whole 100 acres stocked with a regular succession of crops, 

 each crop occupying exactly the same area of one acre, and 

 composed of ages forming an arithmetical series of i, 2, 3, 4 years, 

 and so on, up to 98, 99 and 100. 



It is a requisite condition for the realisation of an equal annual 

 yield that there should be this complete succession of equal areas 

 of all age-classes, from one year old up to the age taken as the 

 age of maturity — one area for each year of age — always kept 



