Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest Protecting Existing Forests and Growing New Ones, from the Standpoint of the Public and That of the Lumberman, with an Outline of Technical Methods
PREFACE WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT AND WHY The object of this booklet is to present the elementary principles of forest conservation as they apply on the Pacific coast from Montana to California. There is a keen and growing interest in this subject. Citizens of the western states are beginning to realize that the forest is a community resource and that its wasteful destruction injures their welfare. Lumbermen are coming to regard timber land not as a mine to be worked out and abandoned, but as a possible source of perpetual industry. They find little available information, however, as to how these theories can be reduced to actual practice. The Western Forestry and Conservation Association believes it can render no more practical service than by being the first to outline for public use definite workable methods of forest management applicable to western conditions. A publication of this length can give little more than an outline,
II.
A HIDDEN GRIEF
Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country,
skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontainebleau, and marked out
as to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and
Nemours. It is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at
rare intervals, and a coppice here and there among the fields affords
for game; and beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or
yellowish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri.
In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and
Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of Saint-Lange,
standing amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness.
There are magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by
the moat, and a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile
which represents the profits of the _maltote_, the gains of
farmers-general, legalized malversation, or the vast fortunes of great
houses now brought low beneath the hammer of the Civil Code.
Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads
full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place
against intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic
PREFACE WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT AND WHY The object of this booklet is to present the elementary principles of forest conservation as they apply on the Pacific coast from Montana to California. There is a keen and growing interest in this subject. Citizens of the western states are beginning to realize that the forest is a community resource and that its wasteful destruction injures their welfare. Lumbermen are coming to regard timber land not as a mine to be worked out and abandoned, but as a possible source of perpetual industry. They find little available information, however, as to how these theories can be reduced to actual practice. The Western Forestry and Conservation Association believes it can render no more practical service than by being the first to outline for public use definite workable methods of forest management applicable to western conditions. A publication of this length can give little more than an outline,