TIMBER GROWING AND LOGGING PRACTICE 
13 
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He states that where fattening cows are allowed to graze through a 
good woods adjacent to a good pasture they will take less than one- 
tenth of their food from the woods. On that basis, the value of 1 
acre of woods pasture is $1.55. 
Chapman and Miller have shown 2 that the stumpage value of the 
products being taken from an acre of the average Illinois wood lot 
each year is $1.69, and that these products bring $4.76 or nearly three 
times as much when sold. The $1.55 worth of meat put on by the 
cow and calf is the sale value of the produce and it should, accord- 
ingly, be compared with $4.76, the sale value of the forest products. 
The value of the latter is more than three times that of the former. 
This $4.76 represents the value of 40.4 cubic feet of wood products 
taken yearly from the average acre of farm wood lot in Illinois. 
This is no more than the average wood lot well stocked with trees 
and efficiently managed could be expected to produce every year. 
The value of the products naturally varies somewhat in different 
parts of this region. It seems obvious, however, that the value of 
the wood the farm woods can produce each year is several times the 
value of the forage. Where pasturing of the woods is heavy, it 
means practically no net growth of timber and a growth of forage 
only a fraction as good as that of open pastures, something that 
nobody wants. It is better from the pasture standpoint to clear the 
land of timber and better from the timber standpoint to eliminate 
heavy pasturing. 
FOREST FIRES 
Where timber occurs over extensive areas, forest fires are prevalent 
and periodically burn over a wide territory. They are a seriously 
unfavorable factor there. Many are set to improve the range, others 
to kill snakes and ticks and other insects and to drive out the wolves. 
The snakes, the ticks and other insects, and the wolves still persist 
after a half century or so of burning, and meanwhile the fires not 
only reduce the final yield materially by thinning out the timber but 
are responsible also for an average loss from defect in timber of 
merchantable size that has been estimated by several lumbermen in the 
region at 20 to 33 per cent. From 50 to 90 per cent of the saplings 
and poles in these periodically burned areas are fire scarred. If 
they reach maturity, they are certain to be seriously defective because 
of rot or insects which enter through the fire-caused wounds. 
An inspection of 207 stumps taken at random on one logging 
operation in southern Tennessee showed the following percentage of 
hollow or rotten centers: 
Yellow poplar 92 
Black oak 57 
Chestnut 84 
White oak 58 
Post oak 100 
Hickory 80 
Chestnut oak 62 
Shortleaf pine 17 
In addition to being hollow or rotten, many of the butt logs, par- 
ticularly of black oak, were wormy. Many of the trees had to be 
butted off 8 to 12 feet, and some were almost valueless. The logging 
superintendent was authority for the statement that the tract had not 
cut more than 50 per cent of what it had been estimated to yield. 
2 Chapman., Herman H., and Miller, Robert B. second report on a forest survey 
op Illinois, the economics of forestry in the statb. State of 111. Nat. Hist. SurVc 
Bui., Vol. XV, Article III, p. 158, 1924. 
