WESTERN WHITE PINE AND LARCH-FIR FORESTS 3 
ing barren. These measures, in which the prevention of fire is of out- 
standing importance, represent, broadly speaking, the least that must 
be done and the lowest cost that must be incurred to keep forest lands 
reasonably productive. While influenced in some cases by the eco- 
nomic conditions in the region, they have been worked out primarily 
from the standpoint of the landowner who may not be ready to 
engage in real timber culture but who wishes to prevent cut-over 
tracts unsuitable for any purpose except timber growing from be- 
coming a liability on his hands. Except within certain limitations, 
which are discussed in dealing with particular regions, the Forest 
Service believes that these first steps or minimum measures should be 
speedily applied to all of the forest lands in the United States. And 
the service believes that public policy should encourage their uni- 
versal application in such ways as protection from fire and the ad- 
justment of forest taxation to the business of timber growing. 
The second group of proposed measures constitutes what may be 
called the desirable forestry practice in the region concerned as far 
as our knowledge and experience to date enable us to determine it. 
These measures are designed to grow reasonably complete crops of 
the more valuable timber trees, making full use of the real pro- 
ductive capacity of the land. The recommendations are addressed 
primarily to the landowner who wishes to use his property up to 
its full earning poyer for timber culture. It is impossible to frame 
any general set of measures of this character that are adapted to 
the individual needs of particular holdings or industrial establish- 
ments. This is true particularly of forest regions like the North- 
eastern States, which include a great variety of local situations both 
in the types of growth and in economic circumstances. Hence, in 
presenting this group of suggested measures the Forest Service has 
attempted only to draw the broad outlines of the more general and 
iundamental things, with illustrative methods of forest practice. 
The details of intensive forestry, like the details of intensive agri- 
culture or engineering, call for expert survey in working out the 
plans and methods best adapted to a particular tract of land or a 
particular business. One of the most important features of expert 
planning for the management of a particular forest property or 
for a supply of raw material for a particular forest industry is to 
devise not simply woods operations that will produce full crops of 
timber but also a scheme of logging that will afford a continuous 
yield of products desired, in order that sustained earnings may be 
realized or a sustained supply of raw material made available. 
In some cases it is not practicable to draw a hard-and-fast line 
between the first steps that will maintain some degree of productive- 
ness on forest land and the more intensive measures that will bring 
the quantity and quality of wood produced up more nearly to an 
ideal management. Gradations between the two general groups of 
measures are inevitable. The Forest Service has not attempted, 
therefore, to deal with the two general types of forest practice as 
wholly separate and distinct, but has rather endeavored to present 
a common-sense and practical résumé of the various steps in timber 
growing in the form that will be most helpful to the man in the 
woods. The bulletins have been written for the landowner and the 
lumberman rather than for the technical forester. Their purpose 
