14 BULLETIN 354, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



The best types of forest are invariably the ones first selected, 

 because they give the richest ash and are less difficult to clear than 

 areas of small, thorny growth. Thus for a meager crop of native 

 provisions a valuable timber crop is destroyed, which it will require 

 a generation and more to reproduce. 



Where the amount of available land is scarce an area may be 

 successively cut over several times at intervals, the parts cleared 

 becoming naturally reforested again between cuttings. Where, how- 

 ever, climatic, particularly moisture, conditions are not favorable it 

 may be difficult or impossible for the forest to reestablish itself in 

 competition with a grass cover. In such cases the succeeding forests 

 may grade from a dense thorny growth through chaparral and low 

 brush, or a very fragmentary scattered tree growth, to open savanna 

 and even desert. It is almost certain that the vast and almost totally 

 unproductive area of so-called pasture land in the central mountain 

 section is the direct result of this practice, which is even now being 

 extensively carried on in all its primitiveness. 



The total lack of property survey, lax title registration, and the 

 free and unmolested operation of the prescriptive right have made 

 it easy for this devastating practice to thrive. Legislation can and 

 ought promptly to be undertaken to eliminate these contributory 

 causes. But the government must go farther. There must be a 

 serious educational campaign combining, unifying, and extending 

 the work of the public-school system, the agricultural experiment 

 station, and any other agencies working for rural betterment, until 

 there can be instilled into the mind of the "conuco" farmer a proper 

 regard for the fundamentals of economic agriculture, by which con- 

 tinuous cultivation under a suitable rotation of crops will be substi- 

 tuted for the present nomadic system. To give force and effect to 

 that campaign the government must, of course, provide these people 

 with the means of acquiring the land and other essentials to the 

 practice of such improved agriculture. 



Taxation. 



The same archaic provisions are in force in Porto Rico for the taxa- 

 tion of forest property as are to be found throughout the United 

 States. The system of taxing the forest annually is unjust and dis- 

 criminatory, encouraging forest destruction. In a country like Porto 

 Rico, with practically no forest resources, it becomes prohibitory as 

 well. Certainly few will elect to plant new forests or apply forestry 

 to improve the productiveness of forests already there if by so doing 

 they merely invite an increased assessment and taxes. The system, 

 in fact, offers a distinct incentive to the owner to destroy what 

 timber there is, so that there will remain but the bare land to tax. 



