bermen lead the world in
skill and ingenuity. They have worked out most efficient methods
of felling and logging the trees. Many foreign countries have
long practiced forestry and lumbering, yet their lumbermen
cannot compete with the Americans when it comes to a matter of
ingenuity in the woods. American woods and methods of logging are
peculiar. They would no more fit under European forest conditions
than would foreign systems be suitable in this country. American
lumbermen are slowly coming to devise and follow a combination
method which includes all the good points of foreign forestry
revised to apply to our conditions.

We can keep our remaining forests alive and piece out their
production over a long period if we practice conservation methods
generally throughout the country. Our remaining forests can be
lumbered according to the rules of practical forestry without
great expense to the owners. In the long run, they will realize
much larger returns from handling the woods in this way. This
work of saving the forests should begin at once. It should be
practiced in every state. Our cut-over and idle lands should be
put to work. Our forest lands should be handled just like fertile
farming lands that produce big crops. The farmer does not attempt
to take all the fertility out of the land in the harvest of one
bumper crop. He handles the field so that it will produce
profitable crops every season. He fertilizes the soil and tills
it so as to add to its productive power. Similarly, our forests
should be worked so that they will yield successive crops of
lumber year after year.

Lumbermen who own forests from which they desire to harvest a
timber crop should first of all survey the woods, or have some
experienced forester do this work, to decide on what trees should
be cut and the best methods of logging to follow. The trees to be
cut should be selected carefully and marked. The owner should
determine how best to protect the young and standing timber
during lumbering. He should decide on what plantings he will make
to replace the trees that are cut. He should survey and estimate
the future yield of the forest. He should study the young trees
and decide about when they will be ripe to cut and what they will
yield. From this information, he can determine his future income
from the forest and the best ways of handling the woodlands.

Under present conditions in this country, only those trees should
be cut from our fore