Harvesting Timber Crops 5 



the Arkansas and Florida forests were created have been thinned 

 by repeated fires to a fraction of what the land may be expected to 

 produce. 



Nevertheless, this district contains some 5,000,000,000 board feet 

 of saw timber, 500,000 cords of tanbark, 500,000 telephone poles, 

 4,000,000 railroad ties, and an unestimated volume of fuel wood and 

 other miscellaneous products — a total volume in the neighborhood of 

 10,000,000,000 board feet. 



There are some 60 species of commercial timber trees and per- 

 haps a third as many more which produce wood that is fit for 

 use. About 25 per cent of the volume is overmature and decadent, 

 and 40 per cent is fully mature and is no longer growing at a 



Fig. 4. 



-In the turpentine woods, Florida National Forest, 

 to the still 



Loading gum for hauling 



profitable rate. The remainder, some 35 per cent, is immature. 

 and though of small volume, occupies a large area and will fur- 

 nish the future yield. 



These forests have suffered severely from the logging operations 

 of the last half century and the forest fires of a hundred years or 

 more. The soil on which the greater part of the timber stands is o( 

 great richness and strength for tree growth, and the climate both as 

 to rainfall and growing seasons is almost ideal. It can be under- 

 stood, therefore, why foresters estimate that the timber crops o\' the 

 future, grown under the care of man and protected from tire, will 

 be at least three times as great in volume per acre and many times 

 more valuable than the crops of the past. 



