2 BULLETIN 1493, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
for logging timber so as to produce a new crop of wood, and for plant- 
ing forest trees on cut-over cr denuded areas. The value of timber 
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 
information on the timber-growing methods which are adapted to the 
various types of forest growth in 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 clim ate, 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 BHR ee in the United States, 
can be evolved only from our own experience and investigation, 
region by region. Hence, to meet the demand for mformation on 
practical ways and means of growing timber profitably i 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 es of the United States. 
The information presented has been gathered from many different 
sources, including the eYeee as far as it was obtaing able, of land- 
owners who have engaged in reforestation. An effort has been made 
to bring together all ‘that any agency has yet learned or demonstrated 
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 publications 
thus undertake to set forth in a simple form what are believed to be 
the soundest methods of reforestation as yet developed in our com- 
mon 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 expe- 
rience 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 
conditions, that are needed to prevent timber-bearing land from 
becoming barren. These measures, in which the prev ention of fire 
is of outstanding importance, represent, broadly speaking, the least 
ee me Es 
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