312 



FORESTS 



FORESTS 



FORESTS. Figs. 424-487. 



. If agriculture is the raising of products from 

 the land, then forestry is a part of agriculture. In 

 the past we have considered the forest to be the 

 free and uncontrollable gift of nature, as are the 

 mines, the sea and the air. We have also been 

 obliged, in all the older regions, to destroy the 

 forest to make it possible to practice farming. 

 Unlike the mines and the sea, however, the forest 

 can be renewed. The renewing is a species of crop- 

 ping. This cropping has its own laws and demands 

 its own special practices, but it is cropping, never- 

 theless. 



Most persons have the tree sense well developed, 

 but do not have the forest sense developed. Ever 

 so many trees may not make a forest. The forest 

 is an organism. One tree has relation to other' 

 trees, and it thrives or fails to thrive largely be- 

 cause of that relationship. The forest has climate 

 and weather. It has flora and fauna. The forest 

 must be treated as a unit, not merely as a collec- 

 tion of trees, any more than a city is treated as 

 a mere collection of houses. A person may be ever 

 so skilful in growing forest trees and yet Tcnow 

 nothing about forestry. A man may be ever so 

 good a builder, but may know nothing about plan- 

 ning, organizing and administering a city. 



The planting and care of trees is arboriculture. 

 The trees may be pears, oranges, maples or pines. 

 The raising and care of trees in forests is silvi- 

 eiilture ; this is one part of forestry. Other parts 

 of forestry are forest management, harvesting, 

 marketing. 



If a forest is a crop, the product must be har- 

 vested. This means that the trees must be cut. 

 The person who merely admires trees, thinks of 

 them as inviolate. They may be inviolate in the 

 yard or on the roadside, but in the forest they are 

 destined for harvest, as are the stalks in a corn- 

 field. If the crop is to be harvested, provision must 

 be made for raising a new crop. As the natural 

 forests disappear, timber must be raised. Some of 

 it must be raised on ordinary farms. With all the 

 use of cement and iron, the demand for timber is 

 increasing. A forest may be as necessary to a 

 good-sized farm as pastures are. The farm forest, 

 therefore, becomes one factor in the general scheme 

 of farm management, — as consciously part of it as 

 the orchard, or the cereal lands, or the live-stock. 



If one is to understand what forestry is, he must 

 get it out of his head that natural forests are 

 necessarily perfect forests. From the standpoint 

 of products, man can grow a much better forest 

 than the major part of the natural forests. The 

 natural forests are likely to be as weedy as ne- 

 glected corn-fields, with whole acres that have a 

 good tree only here and there, and great ranges of 

 trees that are contending with most adverse con- 

 ditions. 



In all the old eastern states, the woodlot is an 

 almost constant part of the farms. It is a ready 

 source of home supplies. In the last census year 

 IJew York furnished more than seven and one-half 

 millions of dollars' worth of farm forest products 



(probably one-third of the state is in woodland), 

 leading all the states and being closely seconded 

 only by Michigan. Probably every one of these 

 farm woodlots can be improved more markedly 

 than can the orchards on the same farms. 



The novelty of systematized ideas about forest- 

 cropping is indicated by the newness of the word 

 forestry itself. The first lexicon definition of for- 

 estry in this country seems to have appeared in 

 Webster's Dictionary in 1880. Even in 1895 the 

 Standard Dictionary defined it as a word of very 

 limited usage. At the present day it is misunder- 

 stood by the greater part of the persons who use, 

 it : most of them think it means merely tree-plant- 

 ing, even shade-tree planting; others think it 

 means the cutting or lumbering of the native for- 

 ests. It is not the purpose of the Editor to attempt 

 a definition here— what has just preceded may give 

 a hint, and what is to come will explain some of the 

 field ; — but it may be said that it has to do both 

 with the making of new forests and with the utili- 

 zation of the old ones. A modern cyclopedia of 

 agriculture would be greatly deficient if it omitted 

 a rather full discussion of the subject of farm 

 forests. 



While forestry is an agricultural subject, it is 

 also a public policy subject, a fact that is expressed 

 in the German custom of associating forestry 

 instruction with the schools or departments of 

 economics. Forests are concerned with the public 

 welfare in the maintenance of water-courses, regu- 

 lation of floods, and modification of wind , and 

 weather ; and they afford a means of utilizing pub- 

 lic and communal lands and of providing public 

 supplies. In other countries, whole towns or com- 

 munities own forests in common. There are regions 

 in this country in which it would undoubtedly pay 

 the town, county or state to purchase lands for the 

 purpose of setting them aside as long-time invest- 

 ments in timber-growing. Under wise management, 

 a town forest might go a long way toward pay- 

 ing town expenses, at the same time that it pro- 

 tected the streams, held back the rainfall, afforded 

 labor in the winter, encouraged thrift in the in- 

 habitants and contributed to the attractiveness 

 and wholesomeness of the region. A man might 

 do far worse than to bequeath a forest to maintain 

 a school (at the same time that it kept the children 

 close to nature and to home), or to aid a charity, 

 or to provide for dependents. The United States 

 and Canadian governments are fully alive to the 

 public policy aspects of forestry questions, as is 

 evidenced by their growing forest services, a sub- 

 ject that will be considered briefly again in Volume 

 IV of this work. 



There is still another aspect of the forest that 

 must not be overlooked. It is essentially native, 

 natural and wild. It maintains an area of abun- 

 dant and free life in the midst of a civilization 

 that razes and levels the surface of the earth. It 

 is part of the real out-of-doors, comparable with 

 the mountains and the sea. No child should be for- 

 bidden the influence of a forest ; and no nation can 

 afford to lose the forest if it hopes to foster free- 

 dom and inspiration. 



