68 THE BOOK OF FORESTRY 
fungus attacks may lay them low before the young trees 
come to maturity and the land is ready for the next 
harvest. In many cases it would be far better business 
management to cut down these large overmature trees 
and spend a portion of the revenue obtained therefrom 
in planting the area with young seedlings or trans- 
plants. 
Finally, forest planting represents a good financial 
investment. In the past, owing to the enormous rise in 
timber values, many large fortunes have been made 
by purchasing wild forest lands. While forest planting 
offers no such speculative opportunities at present, 
nevertheless it does promise to yield at least four to 
five per cent compound interest on the investment: 
Favorable laws regarding taxes on forest lands, and the 
vast improvement in forest fire organizations maintained 
by States, lumber companies and timber land associa- 
tions are making this plan of investment much safer 
and quite comparable to long-term bonds. In spite of 
the fact that in certain parts of the country halfgrown 
timber may be bought at an extremely low figure, con- 
sidering the vanishing timber supply, the idle land and 
water storage problems, reforestation on a large scale 
appears to be splendid investment for States, water 
companies, and any organization with continuous exist- 
ence, 
If it is wise to reforest non-agricultural lands, some 
may ask why not follow Nature’s method and scatter 
seed broadcast upon the ground. The reasons against 
this method are as follows: In the first place the cost 
of seed in such quantities as Nature uses would be out 
of the question. For to collect cones, dry them, extract 
the seed, to say nothing of the labor of cleaning and 
scattering seed brings the per acre cost of such an 
