TIMBER GROWING AND LOGGING PRACTICE \) 
Rather, the process at first was to pick out and fall a few of the 
largest and best trees of the most valuable species, such as black 
cherry, yellow poplar, white oak, or black walnut for furniture or 
stave manufacture, or other specific purposes. Often only 5 to 10 
trees were taken from an acre, and some acres devoid of large trees 
were untouched. Later the small sizes of these same species or the 
best trees of other species were taken. Occasionally nearly all trees 
of merchantable size and quality were cut. 
In most instances logging was conducted by animal power, and 
forest conditions were not badly disturbed. If grazing did not 
follow cutting, the openings created by the operation were quickly 
filled by young growth, and the stand soon became as dense as it was 
before. 
In the woods this system has brought about a steady decrease in 
the proportion of best species in the older timber. The selection or 
culling out of the best trees, continued down to the present day, has 
resulted in a very large area of farm woods whose present mature 
growth is composed of species of little commercial value, together 
with broken, decayed, limby, and crooked trees of the better species. 
If this selective type of cutting continues and if the area is also 
grazed, the farm woods will slowly but surely be eliminated as a 
source of any great amount of timber for the general market or even 
for use on the farm. 
In larger operations, other than those for charcoal manufacture or 
for the avowed purpose of clearing land, selective cutting has almost 
invariably left standing a considerable number of undesirable trees 
large enough to bear seed and to scatter it over the cut-over land. 
These are crooked, stunted, defective, limby trees, or trees too small, 
or otherwise not commercially valuable. Naturally, they embrace a 
greater proportion of the least valuable species. Although it may 
pay at the time to fall a large, defective white oak which will yield 
one log or tie, it will not pay to fall an equally defective black oak 
containing the same volume of less valuable material. Usually, 
therefore, the trees left standing to reclothe the land do not include 
a satisfactory proportion of the more valuable species. 
There are always trees in rather favorable open situations which 
bear and scatter seed at an early age. In consequence, seedlings, often 
inconspicuous, are nearly always present under the old timber before 
it is cut, ready to grow vigorously after logging has been discon- 
tinued. When, as often happens, several hundred or a thousand 
forest tree seedlings or saplings to the acre are already present on 
the ground, or are practically certain to come in after logging, the 
lands would be in better condition for growing timber if the defec- 
tive, old, stunted, and limby trees were removed. Not only are these 
unlikely to develop into valuable timber themselves, but their pres- 
ence interferes with the development of the seedlings and saplings 
that spring up, and so decreases the final yield of timber. 
On areas cut at one time for charcoal, as in parts of Missouri, Ten- 
nessee, and Ohio, where the operations took practically everything, 
occasional large trees and small saplings escaped the ax. Reproduc- 
tion from seed and sprouts invariably followed in spite of the subse- 
quent fires that were fully as much the rule in the old days as in the 
present. Many fine young pole stands exist to-day in proof of this. 
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