Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1911-08-11
FORESTRY.

ALBERT L. BURT.
Among the activities due to popular
advances in economic ideas during the
last decade, is the movement for the
conservation of natural resources, a
movement to which the formulation of
methods of economic forest manage
ment has contributed in no small de-
gree. The conservationist asserts that
it is full time to worry over the de-
struction of our forests. The amount
of standing timber in the United States
to day is estimated as being certainly
less than twentyfour hundred billion
board feet, the rate of consumption is
known very accurately to be sixty
billion board feet year; allowing for
the natural increase in supply by growth
during that time, this would bring the
total exhaustion of our lumber supplies
in from fifty to sixty years.
Now forests are a necessity; few in
deed are the activities of civilization in
which wood is not an essential. A par
tial enumeration of its principal uses
is alone convincing. The greater part
goes for fuel. Wood is the universal
building material. The leather industry
depends largely on hemlock and oak
bark for tannin. Of the manufactures
which are practically all wood, the
planing-mill, furniture, box, and coop
erage products are the most important.
Railroad ties, telephone and telegraph
poles, charcoal, wood alcohol, wood
vinegar, turpentine, resins, gums,
maple sugar are leading forest pro-
ducts, and rubber, though not produced
in the United States, is another forest
product which is scoring tremendous
industrial advance. The standing for
est is of value as a factor in the pre-
vention of destructive flood and drought
! The layer of decaying leaves and vege-
tation under the trees and the loose
holding back supplies from the wet
seasons for the dry times to follow, and
tending toward uniformity in water
level and stream volume. Forests also
serve to protect the soil from destruc-
tive erosion, and in level regions are of
value as windbreaks, checking the VIC
lence of destructive storms as the hills
and mountains do in rugged country.
There is plenty of good available
forest land in the United States to
produce all the wood that is needed for
use. Land suitable for agriculture will
always be reserved for that purpose,
but the sandy stony, thin-soied hill and
mountain sides are prominently the
places for forests, where they utilize
what would otherwise be waste land
and at the same time protect the water
sheds.
The first task of the forester is the
establishment of the forest. Given a
tract of suitable land but without trees.
he must decide whether the natural
processes of seed distribution will plant
his land with desirable species soon
enough and well enough to suit his pur-
poses. If not, he must select and plant
such kinds of trees as are best adapted
to that particular combination of soil.
moisture, and climate and can best be
marketed when grown. If he is work.
ing on small scale, he buys two-vear-
old or three-year-old seedlings from
some nursery company or from the
state forestry department; if, however,
he has a large acreage to plant, he
buys or gathers and cures his own seed,
establishes his own nursery, and trans
plants from it to his land
In what respect does his plantation
differ from the one which nature would
plant? Principally in that it has been
established with far greater economy
of time and space. Moreover such
/ economy characterizes it throughout its
( whole lifetime Nature may plant one
acre with trees too close together,
where they interfere with one another's
development and can live only by sue
cessive suppression and killing of great
numbers of the ones least favorablv
situated; ana announcer acre she may
plant with trees so scattering that they
fail to utilize properly the ground and
moreover grow short, knotty, tapering
rapidly and putting too much of their
increase into branches rather than into
the trunks which alone can make lum-
Der. The forester, on the other hand.
plants his frees over the whoIa ocro o+
uniform distances such that each tree,
while receiving the proper amount of
light and air and soil nourishment. is
yet forced by healthful competition
with its neighbors to send up a tall,
straight, uniform trunk, free from
branches except at the top. He sets
out his trees at the most favorable dis
tances apart and, as the years go on,