FORESTRY. 



EDITED BY DR. B. E. FERNOW, 



Director of the New York School of Forestry, Cornell University, assisted by Dr. John C. Gifford of the sama 



institution. 



It takes thirty years to grow a tree and thirty minutes to cut it down and destroy it. 



WHAT IS FORESTRY? 



Some violent attacks have lately been 

 made on the New York State College of 

 Forestry, it being charged with recklessly 

 denuding the Adirondack tract which the 

 State has placed at its disposal for pur- 

 poses of experiment and demonstration. 

 This unwarranted attack seems to make it 

 timely to discuss again the question "What 

 is Forestry?" — a conception which it seems 

 difficult to inculcate in the minds of our 

 people. This may best be done by repeat- 

 ing the letter which the Director of the 

 College wrote to the Watertown Times, in 

 reply to a request for a statement of the 

 facts in the case, as follows : 



"The introduction in the United States 

 of forestry methods in managing forest 

 properties has been delayed by just such 

 misconceptions, misstatements and misdi- 

 rected attacks as characterize the lucubra- 

 tions lately published in various newspapers 

 regarding the doings of the College of For- 

 estry in the Adirondacks. 



"Cornell University was, by the State, 

 invited to establish a College of Forestry, 

 in which professional foresters were to be 

 educated, and at the same time there was 

 given to it, as an experiment station in 

 charge of the College of Forestry, a tract 

 of land in the Adirondacks, from which 

 the lumbermen had culled the pine and 

 spruce. On this tract the College was to 

 show how such a culled hardwood forest 

 might be managed under forestry principles. 



"Forestry, in simplest terms, means no 

 more nor less with reference to wood 

 crops than agriculture means with refer- 

 ence to food crops. It is a business which 

 is concerned in the production of useful 

 material, the most important and most 

 widely used material, next to food mate- 

 rials. It is, then, entirely utilitarian. It is 

 not concerned, at least directly, with the 

 beauty of trees or with the shelter for 

 game, although these aspects may be inci- 

 dentally looked after. Also incidentally 

 and more prominently must the influence 

 of a forest cover on soil and water condi- 

 tions be kept in view. This latter inter- 

 est is directly important to the forester 

 himself, since he must keep his ground in 

 satisfactory productive condition, if he ex- 

 pects to be successful with his ciop. The 

 forester, then, looks on the forest as a crop, 

 and that involves reaping as well as plant- 

 ing. He is a logger as well as a sower; 



he uses the axe as well as the spade and 

 dibble. He uses the axe even more than 

 the planting tools, for under certain condi- 

 tions he may, by judicious management in 

 the cutting of the old crop, secure the new 

 crop by the seeds falling from the old trees 

 before he removes them. 



"This is the difference between the lum- 

 berman and the forester. The lumberman 

 simply reaps nature's product, takes the 

 best trees, the best cuts, and leaves the 

 rest in possession of the soil for nature to 

 do with it as it pleases, either to let it 

 grow up to weeds and brush or to recover 

 the soil, in due time reproducing another 

 crop. The forester has the obligation 

 when he reaps to provide systematically 

 for a new crop; not the chance volunteer 

 crop of nature, but one of economic value, 

 of species that are most useful, in larger 

 quantity and better form, and in shorter 

 time than nature, unaided, could or would 

 produce. 



"If the College of Forestry were only 

 logging its tract as the lumberman does, it 

 would, indeed, be remiss in doing its duty ; 

 for reproduction is the keynote of forestry, 

 replacing the harvested crop by a crop, if 

 possible, superior in composition. This 

 can be accomplished in more than one way, 

 and the choice of method depends on 

 many considerations which have reference 

 not only to the condition in which the 

 forest manager finds the forest property 

 that he is to manage, but also to the con- 

 dition of the finances which are to back 

 him in this business of forest cropping. 



"Where the lumberman has culled the 

 desirable kinds and left the inferior, or 

 comparatively less valuable ones in posses- 

 sion of the soil, as is the case in most parts 

 of the college tract, it stands to reason 

 that, if the former are to be re-established, 

 it can only be done by reducing the latter 

 and replanting artificially those we would 

 wish to be most prominent in our new crop. 

 Where the desirable kinds are still present, 

 a new crop may be reproduced from the 

 seeds of these, gradually removing the old 

 trees as the young crop needs light. The 

 College of Forestry proposes to use both 

 methods, separately and in combination, 

 taking advantage of any volunteer growth 

 present, leaving the young saplings of 

 hardwoods, conifers and older seed trees 

 where desirable, and planting in pines and 

 spruces to fill up the natural reproduction. 



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