ie 
WHAT IS PRODUCED. 7 
feet of saw timber and 1,500,000,000 cords of wood. They cover 
200,000,000 acres, 95 per cent of which is in the region east of the 
plains, where woodlots form about one-half the forest. Woodlots 
consist in the main of scattered patches of original forest, from which 
the best timber has been cut. They are made to yield little saw tim- 
ber, but furnish the chief supply of fuel, posts, and rails, and of wood 
for other domestic and some local uses. Particularly in the East 
woodlots furnish a considerable number of hewn ties. Through their 
location among farm lands and their small individual area, woodlots 
suffer less damage from fire than do large timber tracts. But they 
are seldom conserved by the regulation of either cutting or grazing. 
Corporate holdings with the larger individual holdings contain 
about 1,700,000,000,000 feet of timber. This is, on the average, the 
most valuable timber in the United States. Forestry is practiced on 
much less than 1 per cent of the timber tracts privately owned. 
WHAT IS PRODUCED. 
The yearly growth of wood in our forests does not average more than 12 cubic 
feet per acre. This gives a total yearly growth of less than 7,000,000,000 
eubie feet. 
Nearly all our native commercial trees grow much faster than those of Europe. 
We already grow post timber in twenty to thirty years, mine timber in twenty- 
five to thirty-five years, tie timber in thirty-five to forty years, and saw 
timber in thirty to seventy-five years. 
We have 200,000,000 acres of mature forests, in which yearly growth is balanced 
by decay; 250,000,000 acres partly cut over or burned over, but restocking 
naturally with enough young growth to produce a merchantable crop; and 
100,000,000 acres cut over and burned over, upon which young growth is either 
wholly lacking or too scanty to make merchantable timber. 
That our forests grow very slowly, although the individual trees 
of many kinds grow fast, is our fault. In Europe forests composed 
of trees growing much slower than most of ours produce over four 
times as much because the forests are cared for. 
We have twenty important kinds of trees which produce in one 
hundred years or less timber fit for the saw. In favorable localities, 
cottonwood, red gum, white ash, and loblolly pine in the South, and 
redwood, Douglas and other firs, Sitka spruce, and western yellow 
pine on the Pacific coast, will grow saw timber in thirty to seventy- 
five years. 
Under present conditions, chestnut, cypress, redwood, yellow pop- 
lar, red and black oak, loblolly, jack, red and white pine, and western 
yellow pine will grow post timber, four to eight inches in diameter, in 
fifteen to thirty years. We arealready getting mine props in twenty- 
five to thirty-five years from red or black oak and loblolly pine, from 
[Cir. 171] 
