k. It's not. The most important
thing is keeping the forest at its best. Cutting trees when they have
reached their maximum is a most necessary part, and it's a policy that
helps to make the forest pay for itself. But the value to the forest
lies in its conservation. You know about that?"

"Yes, sir," said the boy; "it's keeping the watersheds from becoming
deforested, either by cutting or by fire, and so preventing erosion from
taking place."

"I reckon," put in the old Ranger, "thar's another that pleases me still
better than either of those."

"And what's that, Rifle-Eye?" asked Merritt.

"It's the plantin'. When I walk along some of the forest nurseries, an'
see hundreds and hundreds of little seedlin's all growin' protected
like, and bein' cared for just the same as if they was little children,
an' when I know that in fifty years time they'll be big fine trees like
the one we're sittin' under, I tell you it looks pretty good to me.
They're such helpless little things, seedlin's, and they do have such a
time to get a start. Nursery's a good name all right. I've been along
some of 'em at night, when the moonlight was a shinin' down on them, and
they wasn't really no different from children in their little beds."

"I should think," said Wilbur, "that the changing of a forest from one
kind of tree to another would be the most interesting. I mean getting
rid of the worthless trees and giving the advantage to those that are
finer."

"And a few sections west," commented the Supervisor, "you would find
that Bellwall, who's the Ranger there, thinks that the most interesting
thing in the whole of the forest work is putting an end to the diseases
of trees and to the insects that are a danger to them. Another Ranger
may be a tree surgeon."

"A tree surgeon doesn't help so much," put in McGinnis, "the timber is
niver worth a whoop!"

"There you go again," said the head of the forest, "there's other things
to be thought of besides timber." He turned to the boy. "You don't know
the trees of the Sierras, I suppose?"

"I think I know them pretty well now," answered Wilbur. "I had to learn
a lot about them at school, and then Rifle-Eye has been giving me
pointers the last few days."

"What's the difference between a yellow pine and a sugar pine?" queried
the Supervisor.

"Sugar pine wood is white and soft," said the boy, "yellow pine is hard,
harder than any other pine except the long-leaf variety."

"That's right en