50 ANNUAL REPORT OF 



EUROPEAN FORESTRY. 



No intelligent friend of forestry supposes that the sci- 

 ence of forestry will, for a long time, produce in this 

 country the results which are seen in many of the densely 

 peopled states of Europe, but a knowledge of these splen- 

 did results is very instructive and stimulating, and for 

 that reason I have taken pains to diffuse such information. 

 The science of forestry is the same everywhere, but its 

 application depends upon the conditions which are found 

 in different countries. Let us assume that there is a 

 natural coniferous forest on non-agricultural land in Ger- 

 many in which 75 per cent of the trees are mature- and 

 2 5 per cent have not reached merchantable size. Accord- 

 ing to scientific forestry the 75 per cent of mature 

 trees will be cut just as soon as the market would 

 justify and the 25 per cent of trees of unmerchantable 

 size would be left to grow till they should be fit 

 to cut. A similar natural forest in this country 

 would be treated in the same way, if treated accord- 

 ing to forestry principles; and some lumbermen, such as 

 those, for example, who hold pine lands in the valley of 

 the St. Croix river or on its tributaries in this state, and 

 who have gone back every fifteen or twenty years to make 

 a second, third or fourth cutting on the same land, are 

 managing their forests in this way. In cases where pine 

 lands are remote from streams of capacity for floating and 

 where the pine is reached by temporary logging railroads, 

 clean cutting is made of both large and small trees; but 

 lumbering of this latter description is in violation of for- 

 estry principles. If a trained forester were to commence 

 cutting a mature forest he would not begin on that side 

 of it which is exposed to the prevaihng wind, because if 



