2 BULLETIN 1494, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
for protecting forest growth from fire and other destructive agencies, 
for logging timber so as to produce a new crop of wood, and for 
planting forest trees on cut-over or denuded areas. ‘The value of tim- 
ber, along with other economic considerations, is causing landowners 
more and more widely to study the possibility of profitable reforesta- 
tion. These developments have created a general demand for infor- 
mation on the timber-growing methods which are adapted to the 
various types of forest growth 1n the United States and on what these 
methods will cost. 
Timber culture, like the growing of farm crops, is necessarily gov- 
erned in any country by the soil and climate, by the requirements of 
the native forest trees, and by the national economic circumstances. 
Lessons may be drawn from the experience of other countries, as the 
United States has drawn upon the forestry practice of Europe, but 
profitable methods of growing timber, particularly under the wide 
range of forest types and economic conditions in the United States, 
can be evolved only from our own experience and investigation, 
region by region. Hence, to meet the demand for information on 
practical ways and means of growing timber profitably in the various 
parts of the United States, it is important that the results of our own 
experience and investigation to date be brought together and set forth 
in the clearest possible way. 
This the Forest Service has attempted to do in a series of bulletins 
dealing with the 12 principal forest regions of the United States. 
The information presented has been gathered from many different 
sources, including the experience, as far as it was obtainable, of 
landowners who have engaged in reforestation. An effort has been 
made to bring together all that any agency has yet learned or demon- 
strated about the growing of timber in the United States, and the 
results have been verified as far as possible by consultation with the 
forest industries, State foresters, and forest schools. These publica- 
tions thus undertake to set forth in a simple form what are believed 
to be the soundest methods of reforestation as yet developed in our 
common experience and study in the United States. 
Necessarily, the Forest Service claims no finality for the measures 
proposed. Timber growing in every country has come about through 
a gradual evolution in industrial methods and the use of land. All 
too little is yet known of the best methods of growing timber under 
American conditions. As time goes on, research and practical experi- 
ence will add greatly to the success and certainty of the measures 
carried out in our woods, just as American agriculture has steadily 
become more highly developed or just as our manufacturing processes 
have been perfected through experience and study. But we know 
enough about growing timber now in the forest regions of the United 
States to go right ahead. Believing that the forest landowners of 
the United States are now ready to engage in timber growing on a 
large scale, the Forest Service has endeavored to place before them 
In concise terms the best suggestions and guides which the experience 
of this country to date affords. 
In these publications the measures proposed for a particular forest 
region have been arranged in two general groups. The first includes. 
the first steps, or the minimum measures based on local physical coi- 
ditions, that are needed to prevent timber-bearing land from becom- 
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