PROGRESS IN RECLAMATION BISSELL. 513 
This is due to the difficulty of setting any definite bounds to any class 
which ma}'^ be adopted, owing to the following reasons : 
Lands needing drainage can not be absolutely delimited owing to 
the varying necessities of drainage at different times of year and in 
different years owing to change of season and mutations of climate. 
The area is also constantly changing by improvement of natural out- 
lets or the construction of artificial drains, and where the ground 
water stands too high for one character of production it may be 
suitable for another. Where the ground water is too high for success- 
ful agriculture in a wet year it may in a dry year for the same reason 
be superior to other lands in the vicinity with low water table. 
Many areas of cut-over lands also require drainage, and to be made 
agricultural must be not onl}^ drained but cleared of brush and 
stmnps. Large areas of cut-over lands are too rough or too rocky 
for agriculture and should be allowed to reforest themselves; but 
opinions will differ on this point, and any useful classification must 
take these facts into consideration. 
Cut-over lands are even more difficult to define than those need- 
ing drainage. The majority of existing forests have at some time 
or other been cut over, and often the land has been actually in culti- 
vation and practically denuded of trees. The abandonment of fields 
or the neglect of the cut-over areas permits the growth of young 
timber, which is sometimes useful and sometimes of little value. 
Thus, by one definition, any land that has ever been timbered and 
cleared maj be regarded as cut-over land, although in a high state of 
cultivation. This is obviously not the usual or accepted meaning 
of the term. If the fields have been abandoned and young brush has 
started up, it may in some cases be reduced to cultivation again at 
moderate expense any time in the first few years, but this expense 
may increase as the timber grows and clearing becomes more ex- 
pensive. After the lapse of 50 or 60 years the timber may become 
merchantable and the land, although strictly speaking it has been 
" cut over," requires extensive clearing to reduce it to cultivation, and 
ma}^ be similar in its essential characteristics to the virgin forest. 
Where the merchantable timber has been cut, leaving stumps, 
young brush, and small trees, it constitutes a typical case of what is 
known as cut-over land, but as time passes the young trees grow to 
merchantable size, the stumps gradually deca}'^, and in time this land 
ceases to be " cut-over " land. 
It is thus obvious that different authorities, however careful or skill- 
ful, may differ widely in their reports of the actual areas of wet and 
cut-over lands and still more widely when attemipt is made to classify 
these as agricultural and nonagricultural. For this reason, an^^ sta- 
tistics on this subject must be regarded with allowance, and should 
have the term used carefully defined for specific tables. 
