24 FOREST VAl,liATION 



or delay, and even where planting is justified by better returns, this 

 planting makes rarely more than ten per cent of the total expenses 

 on a forestry property. The growth of the forest is quite secure, a 

 dry season may produce less wood, but the next season makes up 

 for it and the harvest of the year does not show the effects at all. 

 Frost, hail, extremes of cold and heat, etc., all affect the forest, but 

 only in a small degree and the cut of the year remains unchanged. 

 Insects may partly defoliate a stand of oalc and hurt it quite severe- 

 ly ; but if the stand recovers, as is usually the case, the man who har- 

 vests this stand will never know the difference and the effects of the 

 injury are hardly felt or known by the business. 



In farming the time of ripening is a critical period ; a few days 

 of dr}' weather, dry hot winds, a hail storm, rain, etc., may largely 

 destroy the season's yield. Nothing of this kind exists in forestry. 

 If a sixty-year-old stand is not growing well, if fungi have started 

 their work and the stand begins to be defective it is cut and used 

 and another put in its place. 



In a twenty-year average farming over large areas must be 

 content with about sixty per cent full or normal crop, even in the 

 great staples, wheat, com, etc., while forestry, where properly prac- 

 ticed at all, produces over seventy per cent of a full crop. In fruit 

 farming it is doubtful if the average crop is twenty per cent of a 

 regular full crop. 



From this sketch it is evident that the risk in forestry is small, 

 smaller than in farming and much smaller than in most city business. 

 It is this very security which has distinguished the state forests and 

 forests of other large owners and which has made the forest the 

 valuable and desirable property it is. Where the forest is neglected, 

 stocked with poor species and handled by poor methods, coppice in 

 France, for instance, and where mismanagement has left unmade 

 suitable improvements, it is only natural that the value of the prop- 

 erty is small, in keeping with low income. But even in these cases 

 it is not risk but low income, due to neglect, which is the fault. 



C. THE INTEREST RATE IN FORESTRY. 



a. General. 



When a farmer who paid $6,000 for a loo-acre farm finds that 

 for 10 years back he averaged $300 net income per year for his crops 

 he naturally asks — what per cent is this on my investment? If he is 

 satisfied with the 5% which it made he will be satisfied with farm 



