FORESTRY 



393 



wainscotirrgs, their birch and pine floors 

 and ceilings, their mahogany and walnut 

 furniture, and their cheerful, open fires are 

 the result of the labors of the poor wood- 

 chopper directed by the lumberman, who, 

 alas! may be devoid of the aesthetic sense 

 that sees beauty in the living tree, and may 

 see beauty only in the well shaped log. 



Let us look at things from all sides and 

 learn which is relatively the more import- 

 ant. Let us have all things and all emotions 

 in their proper places. To the romanticist, 

 the gnarled oak with short trunk and 

 spreading branches appears* beautiful ; the 

 logger calls out with admiration when he 

 meets a long, branchless bole without 

 taper, the crown high up and short, and he 

 longs to cut it and make it useful ; while 

 the forester admires the thicket of young 

 seedlings and his hand itches to secure 

 them a chance to develop, by the removal 

 of the damaging shade. A field of wheat 

 waving in the wind is a thing of rare 

 beauty, but who would stay the hand of 

 the harvester? Let us enjoy it while it 

 lasts but when the time comes for another 

 point of view, do not let us regret the 

 change which is the necessary accompani- 

 ment of life and progress. 



The trees of the forest grow primarily 

 to be cut for their useful material. All 

 other uses and functions which they can 

 fulfill 'become secondary in importance to 

 mankind except under special conditions 

 and in special situations, but if properly 

 used, the forest can tulfill simultaneously 

 all the functions which we desire and ex- 

 pect from it. It can protect the watershed, 

 furnish cover for the game, satisfy the 

 aesthetic sense, and yet give up its useful 

 stores whenever needed. This is the forest- 

 er's point of view. He sees not only the 

 beauty of the leafy canopy, he appreciates 

 not only the protective quality of the forest 

 cover and 'has the true sportsman's love 

 for the woods ; but at the same time he 

 knows that only by the removal and use 

 of the tree is its final destiny fulfilled. He 

 knows also that the forest need not be 

 destroyed, that all its beauty and useful 

 functions can be reproduced and maintained 

 forever, that the trees may be cut, yet the 

 forest persist. The possibility of propa- 

 gating it, of using and reproducing it con- 

 tinuously, makes the forester. He does 

 not, like the lumberman, merely harvest 

 what Nature has produced and leave it to 

 Nature to do as she pleases ; t»ut he pro- 

 vides systematically for a new crop. He, 

 too, uses the ax and cuts his trees, but 

 it is not only to secure the logs which he 

 found ready grown. He cuts with the view 

 of securing logs for the future, to estab- 

 lish and improve in its development a 

 young crop of those kinds which are most 

 useful. Forest utilization thus becomes 



forest preservation. As the human race 

 and all other life are preserved by the re- 

 moval of the old and growth of the young, 

 so the forest is preserved by utilizing the 

 old monarch and giving opportunity for 

 the development of the seedling. Nature 

 alone, unaided, would do this, the old trees 

 decaying, thrown by the winds, burned by 

 lightning or killed by insects, and new 

 generations following. The forester 'only 

 introduces into this process the economic 

 point of view. He utilizes the trees be- 

 fore they have become useless, and sees 

 to it that in the reproduction, the useful 

 kinds have better opportunity than the 

 weeds. For, in the arborescent flora, as 

 well as among the lower forms, we have 

 weeds ; trees which answer no useful pur- 

 pose from man's point of view. The forest 

 of Nature is usually a mixture of useful 

 and useless trees. To the layman, who 

 looks only for shade or beauty or cover, 

 there is a forest where trees and foliage 

 abound, but the lumberman and the for- 

 ester differentiate at once from the point 

 of view of usefulness. Thus a large pro- 

 portion of the woods of Massachusetts 

 are stocked mainly with inferior or useless 

 kinds of trees, the soil is occupied by tree- 

 weeds and the sooner they are replaced by 

 a growth of better kinds, the more benefit 

 will the forests be to coming generations. 

 Again the forester differentiates farther 

 than the lumberman. The latter is inter- 

 ested only in the log timber of the present. 

 The forester's eye is not so entirely occu- 

 pied with this as to 'be blinded to the rest 

 of the vegetation. He sees the younger 

 generations that are present, of what kind, 

 in what numbers, and of what age and 

 condition they are ; for the future, the con- 

 tinuity and perpetuation of the forest is 

 his point of view, and his operations in 

 harvesting the old crop are influenced by 

 the absence, or presence and condition of 

 a young crop that is to take the place of 

 the one removed Where the lumberman 

 has culled the desirable kinds and left the 

 inferior ones in possession of the soil, the 

 aftergrowth of the former is also likely to 

 have been reduced, or it may be absent 

 altogether, and the forester must begin his 

 operations by removing the weedgrowth 

 and replacing it by planting with the useful 

 kinds of timber. Thus in the Adirondacks, 

 where the fires have swept over the old 

 pine slashes, aspen and white birch occupy 

 the ground. To secure this for useful oc- 

 cupancy, lanes may be cut through the 

 aspen growth and in them pines and 

 spruces planted, which benefit from the 

 partial shade of the treeweeds. 



The character of the aftergrowth, even of 

 desirable kinds of woods, is determinative 

 of the persistence of the forest. In Mas- 

 sachusetts woods and especially in the park 



