U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGEICULTUEE 
becoming an art of land management, expressed in practical measures 
for protecting forest groAvth from fire and other destructive agencies, 
for logging timber so as to produce a new crop of wood, and for 
jDlanting forest trees on cut-over areas. The value of timber, along 
with other economic considerations, is causing landowners more 
and more widely to study the possibility of profitable reforestation. 
These developments have created a general demand for information 
on the timber-growing methods 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 
governed in any country by the soil and climate, by the requirements 
of the native forest trees, and by the national economic circum- 
stances. Lessons may be drawn from the experience of other 
countries, as the United States has drawn upon the forestry practice 
of Europe; but j)rofitable methods of growing timber, particularly 
under the wide range of forest types and economic conditions in the 
United States, can be evolved only from our own experience and 
investigation, region by region. Hence, to meet the demand for 
information on practical ways and means of growing timber profit- 
ably 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 wa}^ 
This the Forest Service has attempted to do in a series of publica- 
tions dealing with the 12 principal forest regions of the United 
States. The information presented has been gathered from mam^ 
different sources, including the experience, as far as it was obtain- 
able, of landowners 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 b}^ consultation 
with the forest industries, State foresters, and forest schools. Thesa 
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 common 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. AH 
too little is yet known of the best methods of growing timber under 
American conditions. As time goes on, research and practical ex- 
perience 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 proc- 
esses 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-land- 
owners of the United States are now ready to engage in timber grow- 
ing 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 con- 
