14 SECOND-GROWTH HAEDWOODS IN CONNECTICUT. 



more or less uniform crown canopy. Since oak and chestnut do not 

 stand shade well, the shorter trees which are shaded by their neighbors 

 soon begin to die out. As the survivors increase in size they decrease 

 in number, and it is always the larger trees, whose crowns still 

 receive plenty of light, which continue to develop. Sprout stands 

 of chestnut and oak do not cast a heavy shade, and usually admit 

 to the forest floor enough light to maintain an understory of such 

 shade-enduring trees as red maple, black birch, hickory, and beech, 

 and numerous shrubs. As a rule, however, the trees grown in such 

 shade are slender and too poorly developed to succeed if the main 

 stand of chestnut and oak were removed. Chestnut and black or 

 red oak reproduction is impossible under the normal shade of the 

 older stand, and although seedlings and sprouts may appear, they 

 are unable to attain merchantable size, except in chance openings 

 in the crown canopy. This, and the rapid production of even-aged 

 sprout stands, make clear cutting the rule among owners of Con- 

 necticut woodland. 



The ordinary logging operation in Connecticut, however, involves 

 much waste which might easily be avoided. This occurs not only 

 in the failure to utilize all the usable portion of the stand after it is 

 felled, though this is only too often the case, but in the loss through 

 natural death and decay of the trees killed out in the competition 

 for light and growing space. By s} T stematic thinnings at intervals 

 of 5 or 10 years, after the stand has become of merchantable 

 size for cordwood, this loss not only can be almost entirely pre- 

 vented, but the growth of the remaining trees can be greatly accel- 

 erated and the yield of the stand increased both in quantity and in 

 quality. 1 There is also danger of waste through ignorance of the 

 producing capacity of a woodland and failure to decide upon the 

 most remunerative product for exploitation. 



PART II.— MARKET AND STUMPAGE. 



SELLING TIMBER "BY THE LOT." 



The average woodlot owner of Connecticut has only a vague idea 

 of the actual value of his timber. His sales are usually made "by 

 the lot," and he receives a lump sum for all the timber on a given 

 area with little regard to the exact amount and value of the different 

 products obtainable. Not only are both owner and purchaser in 

 many cases ignorant of even the approximate yield per acre, but 

 they fail to consider probable expense of logging and manufacture. 

 A striking example of loss to the owner which may be entailed by 

 such haphazard methods is that of a sale six or eight years ago of a 

 "lot" of virgin hardwoods for $2,200. The purchaser cut from it 



1 Objects and methods of thinnings in mixed hardwood stands are discussed in Tart IV of this bulletin. 



