24 DIMINISHED FLOW OF ROCK RIVER. 



sentiment about fires. The chief trouble is that few people realize 

 the harm of surface fires. As long as full-grown trees are not killed 

 outright, the tendency is to regard the burning over of woodland with 

 indulgence, if not with approval. Often such fires are purposely set 

 to improve the pasture. The farmer is not apt to let his hired man 

 smoke or his boys light matches in the hayloft if he knows it. But in 

 the woods boys and picnickers build fires and smokers drop cigar ends 

 or pipe coals or throw away burning matches without reproof, because 

 in them the ruinous effect of burning off the leaf cover, consuming the 

 plant-food stored in the humus, and killing the young seedlings, with- 

 out which a forest is like a running stream shut off at its fountain 

 head, is not spectacularly apparent. 



The thing about the woods which it is most necessary to keep and 

 most easy to lose is the forest soil. Its porous, sponge-like texture 

 and richness in organic matter are the result of the working into it, 

 season after season, of the moldering substance of leaves and fallen 

 wood. The preparation in this manner of the conditions favorable to 

 healthy forest growth is a long, slow process. Serious deterioration 

 follows diying, packing, or burning this soil. The loss is aggravated 

 on slopes and hillsides b}^ the washing which is inevitable after the 

 soil has been caked or cut by the hoofs of animals, or has been set free 

 from the tenacious network of little root-fibers which permeate it in a 

 healthy forest. That the woodlot fertilizes itself when it is permitted 

 to is no reason why the farmer should expect that part of his land to 

 do well for him without care for the proper condition of the soil, any 

 more than his plowed field. 



HOW TO IMPROVE THE WOODLOT. 



CARE OF YOUNG GROWTH. 



Young growth should receive far more attention than most men 

 now give it. The sapling of to-day is the tree of to-morrow, and 

 must not be wantonly injured or destroyed. Many men, in getting 

 ready to fell a tree, will cut right a \d left, clearing everything about 

 them in entire recklessness of its future value, and very likely chop- 

 ping down just what ought to have been left to take the place about 

 to be made vacant. Good, vigorous young timber trees that have 

 got ten or fifteen years' growth ought not to be classed with hazel or 

 alder underbrush and treated as "bushes" or "rubbish." It should 

 be a part of farm training to be taught by father to son, by employer 

 to hired help, to recognize and protect young plants of such valuable 

 trees as oak, ash, and hickory, from the seedling stage up. In fell- 

 ing and trimming, in getting out logs, in the passage of wagons and 

 sleds through the woods, care for young growth should always be 

 exercised. 



