17 



CHAPTER III. 



THE FOREST. 



The forest is a community and has a character of its own, just as each tree 

 in it possesses its own individuality. It may be likened to a populous city. 

 Every person in the city has many things in common with all the other individuals* 

 but he also has a character entirely his own. A forest holds many trees, per- 

 haps nearly all of the same kind, but none the less the forest itself has a 

 character that is not wholly shared by any other. A forest is more than a great 

 collection of trees, since it includes not only the trees, but the soil and the 

 undergrowth and natural features peculiar to itself. The trees bear the same 

 relationship to each other as do the people in a town — they are mutually 

 dependent and at the same time in competition with one another. Forests are 

 primarily of two kinds, natural forests and planted forests. The one kind are 

 those with which Nature has endowed the country possessing it, and the second are 

 those which have been planted by man with the definite object of producing timber. 

 Natural forests are of two kinds, cultivated and uncultivated. An uncultivated 

 forest is one which has received no attention from man, except as a storehouse of 

 timber to be cut down and carried away; the cultivated natural forest is one in 

 which man has done something to repair the damage caused by the removal of tim- 

 ber or by fire or any other destructive agency. It will be shown later that a culti- 

 vated forest not only produces a very much larger crop of timber than an unculti- 

 vated one, but is to a large degree protected against loss from fire and other agen- 

 cies disastrous to tree life. 



The "cultivated'' forest already referred to is the ideal of modern scientific 

 forestry. In France, Belgium, and Germany the whole of the forests are culti- 

 vated, and in other European countries the process of converting "wild" or "un- 

 cultivated" forests to "cultivated" ones is proceeding apace. In Australia, with the 

 exception of certain plantations, mainly of exotic trees, the forests are still un- 

 cultivated, but in every State the process of conversion is being pushed on. The 

 effect of cultivation upon a natural forest is to increase very materially the amount 

 of timber which the forest can yield annually without in any way diminishing its 

 productive power. It has been stated by a high authority on forestry that "'four 

 year of 'cultivated' forest growth equals a century of virgin forest growth." In 

 South Africa, where scientific forestry methods have been in operation for a length- 

 ened period, the results abundantly prove that care and attention bestowed on 

 forests reap a rich reward. The following paragraph on the subject is taken from 

 the writings of an eminent forester : — 



"South Africa — Yields of 'wild' and 'cultivated' forests. — In South Africa, 

 Eucalypt plantations, Hogsback, etc., worked at a rotation of 12 to 18 years, yielded 

 600 cubic feet per acre per year; the Nilgiris maximum, we have seen, was 700 

 cubic feet. This is about the quantity of timber obtained when all the mature 

 material is worked, on an average acre of indiginous virgin forest at the Cape of 

 Good Hope (Amatolas). We do not know how long it has taken to produce the 

 stand of timber in the indigenous forest — not less than 100 years, perhaps 200. 

 If Ave take the mature timber as half the gross yield, and these special Eucalypt 

 yields as half average yields, that would show a yearly yield from the cultivated 

 as about one-quarter the "stand" of timber in the wild forest; or, in other words, 

 the cultivated forest makes in four years what the wild forest does in from 100 to 

 200 ijears!" 



