90 ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY. 



sizes and qualities combined are not as a rule pro- 

 duced by trees in open stand. Their production 

 requires the close stand, by which the trees are 

 forced to reach up for Ught in order to escape the 

 shade of their neighbors and all growth energy is 

 utilized in the bole or trunk, the most useful part 

 to man, instead of being dissipated in the growth 

 of branches. The useful forest tree is the one 

 that has grown up with close neighbors, which 

 have deprived it of side light and thereby forced 

 it to form a long cylindrical shaft, to shed its side 

 branches early, which if persisting would have pro- 

 duced knotty lumber, to confine its branch growth 

 to the crown alone. 



Such conditions are also the most favorable in 

 fulfilling the second function of the forest as regu- 

 lator of waterflow and climate, for it is the shaded 

 condition of the soil and the effective barrier to 

 sun and winds, results of a dense stand, by which 

 the forest exercises these regulatory functions. 



The history of the woodlands has been the same 

 in all parts of the world, progressing according to 

 the cultural development of the people. First the 

 forest was valued as a harbor of game; then it 

 appeared as an impediment to agricultural devel- 

 opment, and relentless war was waged against it, 

 while at the same time the value of its material 

 stores made it an object of greedy exploitation, and 

 only in a highly civilized nation and in a well-settled 

 country does the conception of the relation of for- 



