Wording Plans for tfye v>taie Preserve. 



By OVERTON W. PRICE.* 



AT the request of the New York 

 /"\ Forest, Fish and Game Com- 

 mission, the Division of Forestry 

 of the Department of Agriculture is now 

 engaged in the preparation of working 

 plans for the New York State Forest 

 Preserve. Field work was begun in June, 

 upon Township 40, and it is hoped that 

 the working plan for this township will 

 be ready for submission to the Legisla- 

 ture by the first of January, 1901. 



A working plan is, first of all, a plan 

 for lumbering. It specifies the diameter 

 limit to which trees shall be taken, and 

 includes estimates of the yield. It fixes 

 the areas to be logged over, forecasts the 

 profits to be realized, and sums up the 

 whole situation from a business point of 

 view. In so far, it treats of what is to 

 be done in the forest entirely from the standpoint of the lumberman, and it is based 

 upon the same study of local conditions that any good lumberman makes before he 

 fells a tree. The lumberman's working plan, however, generally considers only the 

 most profitable way of harvesting the merchantable timber. The forester's working 

 plan is made with a view also to the removal of the mature timber in such a way as to 

 hasten the production of a second crop. In spite of much that has been said to the 

 contrary, there is no other radical difference in purpose between the two. Both wish 

 to make the forest pay as high an interest as possible upon the capital which it repre- 

 sents. The lumberman is usually content to receive returns only once from the same 

 area. The forester lumbers with a view to lumbering again. Exactly the same study 

 of the quality and amount of merchantable timber, of the conditions for its transport, 

 and the market open to it for sale, is necessary under lumbering and under forestry. 

 It is with this fact in view, and with the realization that no one is better fitted than the 



A FORESTER'S MAKESHIFT. 



Of the Division of Forestry, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. 



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