CHAPTER V. 
FOREST REGENERATION AND TREATMENT. 
The timber lands of Minnesota should, as a rule, be managed 
so as to get the greatest cash returns from them, for that only 
is practical forestry which has this fundamental feature always 
in view. Our virgin forests have contained, and those remaining 
now contain, a large percentage of trees past their prime and 
losing in value each year they stand. Such forest products 
should be worked up as soon as a good market is found for 
them. In virgin forests there is no increase, the annual growth 
being just balanced by the annual decay under normal conai- 
tions. 
The Cultivation of Trees on timber lands in this section 
has never received much attention, and the only data as to the 
rate of increase that we have to follow are what can be obtained 
from the native forests, and these are for this reason only 
approximately correct. In European countries and elsewhere 
it has been proved by long experience that more timber is 
grown per acre, and that the growth is much more rapid, on land 
where some attention is given to systematic forestry than on that 
which is left to itself, and it will seem reasonable to believe this, 
when we consider that much of the energy of trees may be 
expended in fierce competition with neighbors, which may 
weaken them all and perhaps bring about unhealthy conditions, 
and that natural forest land is generally unevenly stocked with 
trees, many of which are rotten or otherwise defective, and 
often with those that are not the most profitable kinds to grow. 
In the cultivated forests unnecessary crowding is prevented by 
judicious thinning, and the land is kept evenly and completely 
stocked with the most profitable kinds. 
Succession of Tree Growth is an expression sometimes 
used as though there were a natural rotation of trees on the land. 
There is nothing of the sort. Sometimes hard woods will follow 
pine, or the pine the hard woods, where the two were mixed at 
