FOREWORD 
will be spots that bear no second growth of merchantable species. 
Also on that class of rough land distributed throughout our farm- 
ing districts, and known as wood lots, in some instances there are 
many acres that must be classed as waste land, as they are produc- 
Pine Growth Fifty-two 
Years Old in Old Field. 
Photo by Maine Forestry Dept. 
ing little more than scrub and 
brush. 
Any idle land in our State that 
is suited for growing a timber 
crop, and not suited for agriculture 
or other purposes, must be classed 
as waste land. Only by reforesting 
these idle lands can we shield our- 
selves from the charge of thrift- 
lessness and mismanagement. Al- 
most in a day we have been re- 
moved from the easy going times 
of former years, when waste was 
overlooked and condoned, to the 
present period of stringency and 
high prices, when we can ill afford 
to tolerate waste and idleness. To 
a large extent this sudden change 
in economic conditions has been 
precipitated by the World War. 
The billions of dollars borrowed by 
our government to carry on that 
worthy cause constitute, in fact, a 
mortgage on all our resources. 
Only the land itself can pay this 
enormous debt. The products of 
the farm, the mine and the forest, 
in the form of food and raw ma- 
terials, furnish the basis of life and 
industry, and if we are to con- 
tinue to thrive and develop as a na- 
tion, every effort must be devoted 
to production and economy. 
In Maine our greatest resource 
is land—land the major part of 
which is chiefly valuable for growing a timber crop. In the past 
the harvesting of the trees from this land, and their manufacture 
into lumber, pulp, paper and a hundred and one other valuable 
