These two instances of forestry have been most useful and effective
among lumbermen and other owners of forest land in the north-east. Among
those which have followed their example are the Berlin Mills Paper
Company in northern New Hampshire, the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company in
northern Michigan, and the Delaware and Hudson Railroad Company in New
York, all of which have employed professional foresters.
The most notable instance of forestry in the south is on the estate of
George W. Vanderbilt at Biltmore, N.C. This was the first case of
systematic forestry under regular working plans in the United States. It
was begun in 1891 on about 4000 acres, and has since been extended until
it now covers about 100,000 acres. A professional forester with a corps
of trained rangers under him is in charge of the work. The Pennsylvania
Railroad has recently employed a trained forester and several assistants
and has undertaken systematic forestry on a large scale.
The effect of the work of the forest service in assisting private owners
is evidenced by the fact that down to the year 1908 670 wood lots and
timber tracts had been examined by agents of the forest service, of
which 250 were tracts over 400 acres in extent, and planting plans had
been made for 436 owners covering a total area of 80,000 acres. Expert
advice is also given to wood lot owners upon application by many of the
state foresters.
_American Practice._--The conditions under which forestry is practised
in Europe and in America differ so widely that rules which are received
as axiomatic in the one must often be rejected in the other. Among these
conditions in America are the highly developed and specialized methods
and machinery of lumbering, the greater facilities for transportation
and consequent greater mobility of the lumber trade, the vast number of
small holdings of forest land, and the enormous supply of low-grade wood
in the timbered regions. High taxes on forest properties, cut-over as
well as virgin, notably in the north-western pineries, and the firmly
established habits of lumbermen, are factors of great importance. From
these and other considerations it follows that such generally accepted
essentials of European methods of forestry as a sustained annual yield,
a permanent force of forest labourers, a permanent road system and the
like, are in most cases utterly inapplicable in the United States at the
present day in private forestry. Methods of forest management, to find
acceptance, must there conform as closely as possible to existing
methods of lumbering. Rules of marked simplicity, the observance of
which will yet secure the safety of the forest, must open the way for
more refined methods in the future. For the present a periodic or
irregular yield, temporary means of transport, constantly changing
crews, and an almost total ignorance of the silvics of all but a few of
the most important trees--all combine to enforce the simplest
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