lies a fortnight to a month longer than in exposed positions and melts with less waste from evaporation, the snow waters more fully penetrate the ground. Again, more snow is caught and preserved under the forest cover than on the wind-swept fields and prairies.

All these conditions operate together, with the result that larger amounts of the water sink into the forest soil and to greater depths than in open fields. This moisture is conserved because of the reduced evaporation in the cool and still forest air, being protected from the two great moisture-dissipating agents, sun and wind. By these conditions alone the water supplies available in the soil are increased from 50 to 60 per cent over those available on the open field. Owing to these two causes, then-increased percolation and decreased evaporation-larger amounts of moisture become available to feed the springs and subsoil waters, and these become finally available to the farm, if the forest is located at a higher elevation than the field. The great importance of the subsoil water especially and the influence of forest areas upon it has so far received too little attention and appreciation. It is the subsoil water that is capable of supplying the needed moisture in times of drought.

THE FOREST TEMPERS THE FARM.

Another method by which a forest belt becomes a conservator of moisture lies in its windbreaking capacity, by which both velocity and temperature of winds are modified and evaporation from the fields to the leeward is reduced.

On the prairie, wind swept every day and every hour, the farmer has learned to plant a wind-break around his buildings and orchards, often only a single row of trees, and finds even that a desirable shelter, tempering both the hot winds of summer and the cold blasts of winter. The fields he usually leaves unprotected; yet a wind-break around his crops to the windward would bring him increased yield, and a timber belt would act still more effectively. Says a farmer from Illinois:

My experience is that now in cold and stormy winters fields protected by timber belts yield full crops, while fields not protected yield only one-third of a crop. Twenty-five or thirty years ago we never had any wheat killed by winter frost, and every year we had a full crop of peaches, which is now very rare. At that time we had plenty of timber around our fields and orchards, now cleared away.

Not only is the temperature of the winds modified by passing over and through the shaded and cooler spaces of protecting timber belts disposed toward the windward and alternating with the fields, but their velocity is broken and moderated, and since with reduced velocity the evaporative power of the winds is very greatly reduced, so more water is left available for crops. Every foot in height of a forest growth will protect 1 rod in distance, and several belts in succession would probably greatly increase the effective distance. By preventing deep freezing of the soil the winter cold is not so much prolonged, and the frequent fogs and mists that hover near forest areas prevent many frosts. That stock will thrive better where it can find protection from the cold blasts of winter and from the heat of the sun in summer is a well-established fact.

THE FOREST PROTECTS THE FARM.

On the sandy plains, where the winds are apt to blow the sand, shifting it hither and thither, a forest belt to the windward is the only means to keep the farm protected.

In the mountain and hill country the farms are apt to suffer from heavy rains washing away the soil. Where the tops and slopes are bared of their forest cover, the litter of the forest floor burnt up, the soil trampled and compacted by cattle and by the patter of the raindrops, the water can not penetrate the soil readily, but is carried off superficially, especially when the soil is of clay and naturally compact. As a result the waters, rushing over the surface down the hill, run together in rivulets and streams and acquire such a force as to be able to move loose particles and even stones; the ground becomes furrowed with gullies and runs; the fertile soil is washed away; the fields below are covered with silt; the roads are damaged; the water courses tear their banks, and later run dry, because the waters that should feed them by subterranean channels have been carried away in the flood.

The forest cover on the hilltops and steep hillsides which are not fit for cultivation prevents this erosive action of the waters by the same influence by which it increases available water supplies. The important effects of a forest cover, then, are retention of larger quantities of water

and carrying them off under ground and giving them up gradually, thus extending the time of their usefulness and preventing their destructive action.

In order to be thoroughly effective, the forest growth must be dense, and, especially, the forest floor must not be robbed of its accumulations of foliage, surface mulch, and litter, or its underbrush by fire, nor must it be compacted by the trampling of cattle.

On the gentler slopes, which are devoted to cultivation, methods of underdraining, such as horizontal ditches partly filled with stones and covered with soil, terracing, and contour plowing, deep cultivation, sodding, and proper rotation of crops must be employed to prevent damage from surface waters.

THE FOREST SUPPLIES THE FARM WITH USEFUL MATERIAL.

All the benefits derived from the favorable influence of forest belts upon water conditions can be had without losing any of the useful material that the forest produces. The forest grows to be cat and to be utilized; it is a crop to be harvested. It is a crop which, if properly managed, does not need to be replanted; it reproduces itself.

When once established, the ax, if properly guided by skillful hands, is the only tool necessary to cultivate it and to reproduce it. There is no necessity of planting unless the wood lot has been mismanaged.

The wood lot, then, if properly managed, is not only the guardian of the farm, but it is the savings bank from which fair interest can be annually drawn, utilizing for the purpose the poorest part of the farm. Nor does the wood lot require much attention; it is to the farm what the work basket is to the good housewife-a means with which to improve the odds and ends of time, especially during the winter, when other farm business is at a standstill.

It may be added that the material which the farmer can secure from the wood lot, besides the other advantages recited above, is of far greater importance and value than is generally admitted. On a well-regulated farm of 160 acres, with its 4 miles and more of fencing and with its wood fires in range and stove, at least 25 cords of wood are required annually, besides material for repair of buildings, or altogether the annual product of probably 40 to 50 acres of well-stocked forest is needed. The product may represent, according to location, an actual stumpage value of from $1 to $3 per acre, a sure crop coming every year without regard to weather, without trouble and work, and raised on the poorest part of the farm. It is questionable whether such net results could be secured with the same steadiness from any other crop. Nor must it be overlooked that the work in harvesting this crop falls into a time when little else could be done.

Wire fences and coal fires are, no doubt, good substitutes, but they require ready cash, and often the distance of haulage makes them rather expensive. Presently, too, when the virgin woods have been still further culled of their valuable stores, the farmer who has preserved a sufficiently large and well-tended wood lot will be able to derive a comfortable money revenue from it by supplying the market with wood of various kinds and sizes. The German State forests, with their complicated administrations, which eat up 4 per cent of the gross income, yield, with prices of wood about the same as in our country, an annual net revenue of from $1 to $4 and more per acre. Why should not the farmer, who does not pay salaries to managers, overseers, and forest guards, make at least as much money out of this crop when he is within reach of a market?

With varying conditions the methods would of course vary. In a general way, if he happens to have a virgin growth of mixed woods, the first care would be to improve the composition of the wood lot by cutting out the less desirable kinds, the weeds of tree growth, and the poorly grown trees which impede the development of more deserving neighbors.

The wood thus cut he will use as firewood or in any other way, and even if he could not use it at all and had to burn it up the operation would pay indirectly by leaving him a better crop. Then he may use the rest of the crop, gradually cutting the trees as needed, but he must take care that the openings are not made too large, so that they can readily fill out with young growth from the seed of the remaining trees, and he must also pay attention to the young aftergrowth, giving it light as needed. Thus without ever resorting to planting he may harvest the old timber and have a new crop taking its place and perpetuate the wood lot without in any way curtailing his use of the same.

G. PRINCIPLES OF FOREST ECONOMY.

It is possible to carry on forest production, to grow and market forest products, without making a special business of it.

The farmer can manage his wood lot so as to produce and reproduce a valuable wood crop, applying all the art of silviculture without any special bookkeeping or other business organization. If he performs his own labor and counts it nothing, and if he use his own wood crop in his buildings, fences, or in his stove, or can sell it to his neighbors, and if he keep his wood lot on the rocky part of his farm or where it serves as protection against damage from winds or waters, he can make forest growing at least indirectly profitable without much effort.

The case is different when we go into forest growing as a business for the market and for revenue, for profit on an invested capital, and on expenditures. Then it becomes necessary to adopt more systematic procedures, to organize, as in a large mercantile establishment, the business in detail, to adopt proper methods of bookkeeping, to keep control of income and outgo, so as to insure the profitable running of the business; and, as in all properly conducted business enterprises, the adequacy of the capital employed and of the margin realized must enter into consideration.

Besides the purely technical care of the productive forces to secure the best quantitative and qualitative production of material—the highest "gross" yield--there must be exercised a managerial care to secure the most favorable relations of expenditure and income, the highest "net" yield, a surplus of money results without which the industry would appear purposeless, at least from the standpoint of private enterprise and investment.

Carried on by government activity for reasons of general cultural advantages, the "net yield" or money profits may be considered secondary, perhaps be dispensed with, and it may even appear rational to carry on this industry like any other form of public works, at a loss. Nevertheless, even in that case, it would be desirable to organize and systematically carry on the business, to keep account, compare, and bring into relation the results with the efforts; to measure the cost.

The manner in which such systematic business organization and accounting is done must vary according to the conditions and peculiarities of the industry, and hence it differs widely in the different industries. Thus, although agriculture and forestry, both having to do with productions of the soil, would appear of similar nature, yet the conditions of production vary so widely that their methods and problems of management and of accounting must also differ considerably.

In both these industries there is required a fixed and a working capital; but while the agriculturist has this outside of land and houses, in movable condition, or can in a short time-at the end of each season-make most of it movable, the forest manager has his working capital mostly bound up, immovable, represented in the growing timber, the accumulation of many years' growth, which may or may not be ready for harvest.

The length of time with which forestry has to calculate in the creation of its products is an element which introduces problems into the calculation of future yields, both gross and net, unknown to most other industries and difficult to solve. A further difficulty, also peculiar to the industry, is the fact that it can not be readily determined what part of the forest ought to be left as working capital and what part should be harvested; there is no definite time, naturally determined, when the harvest is ready, and the question as to which part of the growing timber should be left standing for further accumulation of products to be harvested involves complicated technical as well as financial and managerial considerations.

Furthermore, there are difficulties arising from the manner in which forest growth develops, in estimating or determining the accretions in quantity and value of the crop, and difficulties in

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determining the value of forest soil and in predicting the market value of the products at future times when they will be ready for harvest.

All these difficulties, which are peculiar to the forestry business, at least to a much greater degree than to any other business, require much more careful planning and systematic procedure than is usually necessary with other industries in which the product is sold or expected to be turned to account within a short time from its production and in which the cost of production and the price of products can be more readily ascertained, the methods of carrying on the business more readily changed or adapted to changing market conditions, and the fixed capital more readily liquidated.

This branch of the forestry business, therefore, in countries where the industry is developed, has experienced very elaborate treatment, the purely economic or managerial problems-forest economy or forest management-being sharply distinguished from the problems of technical forest production, forestry technique. While this latter branch deals with the questions of silviculture, forest protection, and forest utilization-how to grow, protect, and use to best advantage the forest products the former, forest economy, deals with the questions of forest valuation, forestal statics, and forest regulation, how to determine the quantity of production, how to compare expenditure and result, how to dispose of the forces of production, regulate orderly, and systematically · manage the forest property so as to produce continuously the most satisfactory money results.

We speak now, it must not be forgotten, not of the business of chopping down and turning into cash virgin forest growth, a mere crude exploitation of the natural forest resources in which the present lumber industry is concerned, but we propose to outline the considerations which are needful when we desire to engage in the business of producing the supplies for the lumber industry after virgin supplies are exhausted, an industry which so far has remained undeveloped in the United States. In the lumber industry of to-day the business methods, as far as the accounting of forest supplies are concerned, are of the crudest. It consists in ascertaining roughly the amount of timber which could at once be readily utilized with profit, and no account is made of any future values, or rarely so.

The forest is treated like a quarry or mine from which the pay ore is removed, then to be abandoned. If there should be anything of value left or developed later, this is worked out in the same way, like working over the dump of an abandoned mine. In other words, the lumber industry is not a productive but a transformative industry, preparing the product for market; it st nds in relation to the forestry industry as that of the cattle breeder to that of the butcher, and wood production is not a part of it.

The lumbering industry, concerned in the utilization of forest products, is only the tail end of the forestry industry, which latter begins with the systematic management of the forest resources for reproduction and continued revenue.

In the forestry business we consider the forest somewhat like an orchard from which we only reap the fruit annually, or like a herd of cattle kept for breeding purposes when we may slaughter the old but look for a constant supply of young cattle, growing and maintaining a due proportion of calves and heifers. Thus the forester proposes to use annually or periodically only as much as has annually or periodically grown. If, for instance, he had found that on his 1,000 acres the average annual wood production was 50 cubic feet per acre he would be entitled to cut 50 × 1,000 50,000 cubic feet yearly.

In order to produce this amount continuously and in such form and size as to be useful, and to permit a harvesting every year, there would have to be a certain amount of wood stored up and distributed over younger and older trees or stands of trees, which are maintained as stock

The ascertainment of the amount of standing timber is done in various ways. Usually the judgment of a more or less experienced expert, a "timber looker," is taken, who by riding or walking through the woods mentally forms an idea of the number of logs that could be got from the land, and of the cost of moving them to the mill. An improvement consists in making at least a few trial measurements either of the contents of average acres, or else counting and measuring the trees of certain kinds which constitute the main value. This is done especially with walnut, cherry, or yellow poplar, and other kinds which are especially valuable and occur scattered through the woods; these are now often sold by the tree instead of by the acre or by the M feet B. M.

A fair method also practiced is to sell by the "scaling" when the logs are cut and collected on “skidways,” where they are measured and paid for by the M feet B. M.

on which the annual growth takes place (the wood capital), just as in the herd a certain number of cows and bulls and heifers of various ages must be kept to secure a continuous supply of cattle and a tolerably uniform revenue on the investment.

In order to be able to determine what this wood capital is to be and how much the yield or revenue that can be expected the manager must have knowledge of the manner and rapidity with which the crop develops.

It is not necessary to go into details of the methods developed to ascertain the amount of wood growing per acre at different ages, or how to determine the rate of growth and the quantitative as well as qualitative accretion. It will, however, be needful to indicate briefly what in general the results of such measurements would be in order to get an insight as to how these will influence the methods of management.

While individual trees of the same species may develop very differently and seemingly without law, when we deal with larger numbers under forest conditions we may more readily discern that a more or less precise law and rate of growth can be established for each species and condition. Of course different soil and climatic conditions and the character of the site influence the rate of development of forest growth, yet on all sites the relative rate at various periods remains more or less constant.

Thus for a given species and site we will be able to discern after a brief seeding stage a juvenile stage, when trees develop in height growth at the expense of diameter growth; an adolescent stage, when height growth decreases and diameter growth accelerates, and a mature stage, when height growth practically ceases and diameter growth, although persisting, declines. The growth in volume progresses differently because the very wide rings or layers which are laid on in early life, and which denote rapid diameter growth, cover only a small circumference, while the much narrower ring of a later period laid on over a much thicker stem represents a much larger volume.

Thus the rate of growth in white pine decreases in height and thickness practically from the polewood stage forward, while the rate of growth in volume increases up to the sixtieth or eightieth year, and then continues uniformly for a century or more before it declines.

Or to illustrate in figures, a white pine seedling only 1 foot high and one-half inch in diameter, with hardly an appreciable volume of stem, will have reached a height of 30 feet in twenty years, 60 feet in forty years, 100 feet in one hundred years; the width of the rings will have averaged one eighth to one-sixth inch during the first thirty years, while at one hundred years the average will have come down to one twelfth inch; but the volume growth, which during the first thirty years was but a fraction of a cubic foot, has after sixty years attained a rate of 1 to 2 cubic feet per year, and is kept at that rate to a great age-two hundred and fifty to three hundred

years.

If we substitute the red or Norway pine we will find the progress quite different. It may start out at about the same rate as the white pine, and at sixty years may also have attained a rate of 2 cubic feet per year, but soon the rate begins to decline, and in the one hundred and twentieth year with a volume of 80 cubic feet the average accretion is only two-thirds cubic foot per year. Its average growth for the one hundred and twenty years has now become equal to the current rate of growth.

The tree then passes its maximum capacity of wood production, for from this time on its current growth falls behind its average, and from the standpoint of quantitative production the tree should now be cut.

But there is a growth in value which does not progress continuously and proportionately with the growth in volume, and which is also an important factor in deciding when a tree is to be cut.

Generally in all lumber and timber markets the prices are classified, and sticks, boards, etc., are priced according to size as well as freedom from defects and knots. For instance, poplar logs under 12 inches may have no price at all, logs of 16 to 20 inches may bring $15, those of 20 to 29 inches may bring $20, and if over 30 inches $25 may be paid per 1,000 feet B. M. contained in the log. Hence, although the quantitative development may have decreased in the log of 29 inches, it may still pay to hold it over until the better-paying size is attained.