TIMBEK GROWING AND LOGGING PEACTICE IN CALIFORNIA 3 
ditions, that are needed to prevent timber-bearing land from be- 
coming barren. These measures, in which the prevention of fire is 
of outstanding importance, represent broadly speaking the least 
that must be done and the lowest cost that must be incurred to keep 
forest lands reasonably productive. While influenced in some cases 
by the economic conditions in the region, they have been worked out 
primarily from the standpoint of the landowner who may not be 
ready to engage in real timber culture but who wishes to prevent 
cut-over tracts unsuitable for any purpose except timber growing 
from becoming a liability on his hands. Except within certain 
limitations, which are discussed in dealing with particular regions, 
the Forest Service believes that these first steps or minimum meas- 
ures should be speedily applied to all of the forest lands in the 
United States. And the service believes that public policy should 
encourage their universal application in such ways as protection 
from fire and the adjustment of forest taxation to the business of 
timber growing. 
The second group of proposed measures constitutes what may be 
called the desirable forestry practice in the region concerned as far 
as our knowledge and experience to date enable us to determine it. 
These measures are designed to grow reasonably complete crops of 
the more valuable timber trees, making full use of the real productive 
capacity of the land. The recommendations are addressed primarily 
to the landowner who wishes to use his property up to its full earn- 
ing j)ower for timber culture. It is impossible to frame any gen- 
eral set of measures of this character that are adapted to the in- 
dividual needs of particular holdings or industrial establishments. 
This is true particularly of forest regions like the Northeastern 
States, which include a great variety of local situations both in the 
types of growth and in economic circumstances. Hence, in present- 
ing this group of suggested measures, the Forest Service has at- 
tempted only to draw the broad outlines of the more general and 
fundamental things, with illustrative methods of forest practice. 
The details of intensive forestry, like the details of intensive agricul- 
ture or engineering, call for expert survey in working out the plans 
and methods best adapted to a particular tract of land or a particular 
business. One of the most important features of expert planning for 
the management of a particular forest property or for a supply of 
raw material for a particular forest industry is to devise, not simply 
woods operations that will produce full crops of timber, but also a 
scheme of logging that will afford a continuous yield of products 
desired, in order that sustained earnings may be realized or a 
sustained supply of raw material made available. 
In some cases it is not practicable to draw a hard and fast line 
between the first steps that will maintain some degree of produc- 
tiveness on forest land and the more intensive measures that will 
bring the quantity and quality of wood produced up more nearly to 
an ideal management. Gradations between the two general groups 
of measures are inevitable. The Forest Service has not attempted, 
therefore, to deal with the two general types of forest practice as 
wholly separate and distinct, but has rather endeavored to present 
a common-sense and practical resume of the various steps in timber 
growing in the form that will be most helpful to the man in the 
woods. The bulletins have been written for the landowner and the 
