FORESTRY. 



233 



he must often cut more than the logger, 

 if he wishes to fulfill his main duty of re- 

 placing the old by a better young crop. 



Thorough utilization of all portions of 

 the crop, which the lumbermen can avoid, 

 if unprofitable, is as much an obligation of 

 the forester as reproduction of the crop, if 

 not for economic then for silvicultural 

 reasons. Hence, when a tree is felled, not 

 only the body, which makes logs, but as 

 far as practicable the branchwood and 

 brush, the crooked, misshapen and half 

 rotten parts should be disposed of ; a diffi- 

 cult financial problem where wood is plenti- 

 ful and no market for such material exists. 



Working in hardwood, as in the College 

 Forest, this debris, or inferior material, 

 represents 2 to 3 times in bulk what the 

 log material furnishes. Hence, the first 

 and main concern of the management was 

 to secure a market for this part of the har- 

 vest, as well as for the logs. The only 

 known means of profitably utilizing large 

 quantities of cordwood, away from dense 

 population, and when the cost of transpor- 

 tation forbids its sale as firewood, is in its 

 conversion into wood alcohol, acetic acid 

 and charcoal. Arrangements were there- 

 fore made with the Brooklyn Cooperage 

 Co. to establish factories for the manu- 

 facture of logs into staves and of cordwood 

 into wood alcohol, and for building a rail- 

 road to transport the materials from the 

 woods to the factories. 



This combination, in which almost all the 

 material of the felled trees is turned to best 

 use, instead of wasting, as the logger usu- 

 ally does, 2-3 to Y$ in the woods, is the first 

 of its kind established in the United States, 

 since usually the manufacturers of wood 

 alcohol use the body-wood also in their 

 manufacture, and the College felt rather 

 proud of its achievement in bringing about 

 this economic reform in the use of the 

 wood crop. Curiously enough, an attempt 

 has been made by ignorant or ill disposed 

 or otherwise improperly interested persons 

 to discredit this effort at thorough utiliza- 

 tion. 



The application of forestry or silviculture 

 to our culled and mismanaged woodlands 

 throughout the United States as a business 

 proposition is in most cases possible only 

 where the means exist of utilizing this 

 inferior material ; for the cash which 

 would otherwise have to be spent in mak- 

 ing room for the young crop will surely ex- 

 ceed reasonable proportions, or else the 

 young crop will be inferior or suffer dam- 

 age. 



In those woods from which the valuable 

 conifers have not as yet been culled, it 

 may be possible and good business policy 

 merely to remove the salable part of coni- 

 fers with less damage, if possible, than the 

 culling process usually brings with it, and 



to defer the application of positive silvi- 

 culture to some later period ; but in the 

 culled hardwoods no silvicultural methods 

 designed to reproduce a better crop can be 

 successful which do not take care of the 

 debris. 



I hope I have made clear to any intelli- 

 gent reader that forestry consists in har- 

 vesting as well as in replacing wood crops ; 

 that in this obligation to provide for a new 

 crop, and almost alone in this, does the 

 forester differ from the lumberman. 



Having been successful in securing a 

 market for most of the material to be har- 

 vested, the next question was as to the man- 

 ner of harvesting and reproducing the crop, 

 the choice of the silvicultural system, 

 namely, the method by which the crop is to 

 be reproduced. 



There are many variations in method 

 possible, from the simple clearing and arti- 

 ficial replanting, through various degrees of 

 gradual removal and natural reproduction 

 to the so-called "selection forest," in which 

 the harvest is made continuous by slow re- 

 moval and the reproduction, by natural 

 seeding, is also continuous. Among practi- 

 tioners no one of these methods is recog- 

 nized as the only proper one. Each has its 

 advocates and objectors; each has its ad- 

 vantages and disadvantages ; each has its 

 place under certain given conditions. It is 

 only the less experienced who clings to one 

 prescription; the man of wider judgment 

 varies it according to conditions. 



The choice of method is partly influenced 

 by natural conditions, partly by the objects 

 and conditions of the owner. In a protective 

 forest and in a luxury forest, the selection 

 system, which culls here and there and 

 leaves the forest as a whole undisturbed, 

 may be most satisfactory on account of the 

 objects in view, which necessitate a con- 

 stant soil cover of grown timber; but in a 

 business forest, which is managed for rev- 

 enue, the first or any of the intermediate 

 methods of gradual removal, or a combina- 

 tion of natural and artificial means of pro- 

 ducing the crop may be preferable, because 

 cheaper or more successful in final results 

 of a useful timber crop. 



Among the younger generation of forest- 

 ers there seems to be a belief that the 

 selection system or some system of gradual 

 removal and natural regeneration alone is 

 to be advocated. On the other hand, an old 

 German practitioner, a past master of the 

 art, sums up his observations and ex- 

 periences regarding the artificial and natu- 

 ral regeneration as follows : 



"Fortunately there was a time when it 

 was supposed to be the best method to clear 

 away the old conifer and oak stands and 

 replace them by hand. From this time date 

 the dense 20, 30, 40, 50 year old pole-woods 

 of spruce, pine and oak, which we can ex- 



