TIMBER GROWING IN DOUGLAS FIR REGION Ay 
Properly executed thinnings will materially accelerate the growth 
of the stand, by giving each tree the ideal amount of growing space. 
Under intensive mana cement it is entirely possible to get as much 
volume of timber out of several thinnings as an unthinned stand 
would yield at maturity. ‘This phase of tending the growing crop is 
a most important field for the forester’s art and should not be over- 
looked by the owner who is studying the possibilities-of intensive 
forest management. 
The trees that die, fall over, and rot might just as well be cut and 
utilized before they die. Those from the 25 or 30 year old stand 
would yield poles and wood; those from the 50-year-old stand would 
make cordwocd, ties, mining timber, piling, and even small saw 
timber. The amount of material m second-growth stands which is 
now going to waste and might be utilized by making thinnings is 
enormous. An instance is at hand where one portion of a 42-year-old 
stand yielded 8.78 cords an acre in casual thinnings in 10 years, and at 
the end of that time had as much volume (84.7 cords per acre) as the 
unthinned portion, and in trees of larger diameter. 
Already a kind of thinning, though without technical care for its 
effect on the growing crop, 1s being practiced in some ver iy accessible 
young stands, as on farmers’ wood lots. The time is not far distant 
when it will be economically profitable in this region to make a general 
practice of cutting the superfluous trees out of immature stands 
which are reasonably accessible. 
