2 The Farm Woodlot 



make a forest any more than separate buildings make a 

 city. The term "city forestry" is a contradiction. A 

 wood or forest has its own life, and it produces and it 

 meets a certain set of conditions. The cultivation of 

 separate trees is arboriculture ; if the subjects are fruit 

 trees, the cultivation of them falls in the domain of po- 

 mology. 



FOREST ECONOMICS 



The forests have never received the proper credit for 

 the great part they have played in the rapid development 

 and civilization of this country. So strenuous was the 

 struggle of the early settlers to subdue the forest and wrest 

 from it the land necessary for their farms, and so omni- 

 present was that forest, that it came to be considered as an 

 enemy to be fought; the benefits accruing from it were 

 lost in the sum of injuries. 



And yet that very abundance of forests — so often 

 considered as a curse — was an enormous factor in the 

 civilizing of the country, in the rapid rise in the Ameri- 

 can standard of living. Lumber was at that time by far 

 the cheapest building material. This cheapness of lum- 

 ber brought a neat house within the reach of every man, 

 and with the neat house comes the increased pride in the 

 home, the increased self-respect and with it the rise in the 

 standard of living. 



Men with no capital at all could hew themselves a 

 home from the forests. With an ax they built log cabins. 

 In the winter they worked in logging camps and earned 

 the money on which they could live while they cleared 

 the land and started their farms. Fence material grew 

 in the fields. Fuel was everywhere. 



