Now, by the common practice of culling the best it is evident that gradually all the best trees of the best kinds are taken out, leaving only inferior trees or inferior kinds--the weeds among trees, if one may call them such--and thus the wood lot becomes well-nigh useless. It does not supply that for which it was intended; the soil, which was of little use for anything but a timber crop before, is still further deteriorated under this treatment, and being compacted by the constant running of cattle, the starting of a crop of seedlings is made nearly impossible. It would not pay to turn it into tillage ground or pasture; the farm has by so much lost in value. In other words, instead of using the interest on his capital, interest and capital have been used up together; the goose that laid the golden egg has been killed. This is not necessary if only a little system is brought into the management of the wood lot and the smallest care is taken to avoid deterioration and secure reproduction. IMPROVEMENT CUTTINGS. The first care should be to improve the crop in its composition. Instead of culling it of its best material, it should be culled of its weeds, the poor kinds, which we do not care to reproduce, and which, like all other weeds, propagate themselves only too readily. This weeding must not, however, be done all sit once, as it could be in a field crop, for in a full-grown piece of woodland each tree has a value, even the weed trees, as soil cover. The great secret of success in all crop production lies in the regulating of water supplies; the manuring in part and the cultivating entirely, as well as drainage and irrigation, are means to this end. In forestry these means are usually not practicable, and hence other means are resorted to. The principal of these is to keep the soil as much as possible under cover, either by the shade which the foliage of the tall trees furnishes, or by that from the underbrush, or by the litter which accumulates and in decaying forms a humus cover, a most excellent mulch.