22 DIMINISHED FLOW OF ROCK RIVER. 



sum in the course of years. The woodlot, carefully tended, can make 

 its owner independent of coal prices and the lumber yard, besides 

 providing- a resource against hard times, when the sale of a little extra 

 lumber makes it possible to draw on past savings. Neglected, it will 

 produce little timber of value, and is all but worthless for anything else. 

 For the farmer who decides that all his land ought to be made useful 

 instead of only the better part of it, and that paying taxes on idle land 

 is a waste of good money, the suggestions which follow may pixwe 

 helpful. 



COMMON DEFICIENCIES OF WOODDOTS. 



QUANTITY AXD QUALITY OF STOCK. 



It is of first importance that the ground should be well stocked. 

 Usually in this region there are not enough trees to make full use of 

 the land they occupy. To anyone accustomed to the woods this is 

 conspicuous. The openings are large, half the ground is bare of trees 

 and occupied by grass and weeds, undergrowth is absent, and the 

 whole tract looks like a picnic ground. To be well stocked there 

 should be trees enough, old and young, to shade out the grass com- 

 pletely. In the case of pine r an acre should have about three hundred 

 60-year old or seven hundred 40wear old trees. 



To be valuable the woodlot must not only be well stocked, but it 

 must also be stocked with trees of good quality and good kinds. On 

 most tracts the waste in this respect is quite as great as from the defi- 

 ciency in numbers. The good trees have been cut out; those which 

 remain are the runts, the cripples, and the worthless. Frequently the 

 whole woodlot is occupied b} T scattering, crooked, undersized trees, 

 many of which are defective with decay, with here and there a few 

 better trees of Elm, Basswood, Blue Beech, or some still less valuable 

 kind. These trees are doing the farmer no good. They are not pay- 

 ing rent; they are not producing half enough wood, and what little 

 they produce is of the poorest kind, crooked and defective even for 

 fuel, hard to get sawed and split, stuff that will not pile into decent 

 cord wood or sell for a respectable price. A poor tree is better out of 

 the woods than in, for it fills up room where a better one might be 

 growing. It takes no more ground or time to raise a White Oak 

 than a spreading Blue Beech, and the former will have 82 worth 

 of railroad ties in it while the beech will make little more than fire- 

 wood, and none too much even of that. A tree with a crown like an 

 apple or shade tree lays on most of the wood in the limbs instead of 

 the log, and besides takes up too much ground. It is a poor farmer 

 who does not look after the quality of his seed corn, in order after all 

 his labor in plowing and planting and cultivating to gather a full crop. 

 Why should he not apply the same principle to his woodlot? 



