10 BULLETIN 1491, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
Logging can be expected to continue on a rather intensive scale 
on the large holdings in the alluvial bottoms of the Ohio and Missis- 
sippi River drainage until the valuable mature timber is cut out, but 
will probably not be followed by any extensive timber growing. 
For the most part, the land is very rich and is rapidly being leveed 
and ditched and opened up by good roads. The improvements have 
made taxes high, and, in spite of some difficulties and drawbacks 
which attend the development of these lowlands, it seems inevitable 
that for the most part they will be farmed. Timber produced on 
them in the future will, as a rule, come from small farm woods simi- 
lar to those in the uplands. 
In the mixed hardwood-conifer type, the conifers are ordinarily 
cut to a smaller diameter than the associated hardwoods because they 
are less defective and size for size yield more per tree. Insufficient 
conifers are thus likely to be left for seed trees. Commonly, how- 
ever, there is in the stand considerable young coniferous growth too 
small for cutting. If not destroyed by the logging operation, it will 
form a part of the next crop. If young conifer growth is scarce and 
no old conifer seed trees are left in the logging operations, hard- 
woods will take possession of the ground. 
All too commonly, little or no care is exercised in logging opera- 
tions to avoid breaking and rendering worthless young and vigorous 
timber of pole and sapling size and of considerable potential value. 
The stumps of sound timber, moreover, are frequently cut unneces- 
sarily high. Both practices involve in the aggregate a tremendous 
and needless waste, which could be greatly lessened by insistence on 
the part of the operators that the practices cease. It would work no 
hardship on the operators, cost them nothing more than a little 
closer supervision of logging operations., and mean money in their 
pockets in the end. 
Although the cutting of timber in this region has not been con- 
ducted with the idea of perpetuating the timber crop, the net effect 
of the operations is rather to deplete or lower the value of the stand 
than to devastate the region in the sense of making it hopeless for a 
future natural growth of timber. Barring constantly recurring fires 
and concentrated grazing by livestock, most of the cut-over lands of 
this region will come back, and rather quickty, to a second growth 
of which commercial timber species will form a large proportion. 
FACTORS UNFAVORABLE TO CONTINUOUS FOREST CROPS 
DOMINANCE OF THE AGRICULTURAL CROP IDEA 
For the most part, the use of the land is controlled by agricul- 
tural interests whose dominating idea is the production of the ordi- 
nary farm crops, as wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, and hay. Much 
of the agricultural land in the region was developed through the 
laborious process of clearing it of timber. Although the need for 
clearing has largely passed, the belief persists that the land should 
be devoted to agricultural crops and to grazing. In the better 
farming portion of the region, moreover, the value of the land is 
high and the taxes on timberland nearly, if not fully, as burdensome 
as on cleared land. The owner accordingly feels obliged to operate 
