If it does this and is the means of checking in any degree the reckless trend of people from the country to the cities, the author will feel that his efforts have been well repaid. CHAPTER XXII THE WOOD LOT If you have a bit of woods on your little farm, take care of it. By intelligent thinning you can make an average income of five dollars per acre from ordinary second growth wild woods. The cord wood, barrel hoops, fence posts, and so on will decrease your expenses, while the timber will increase in value. That lot is the place to start your boy as a forester. Instructions how to treat the trees can be obtained from your State Forestry Department or from the National Forest Service at Washington: the care of growing timber is a big subject and requires study, but don't sell your standing timber without their advice. Forestry can hardly be made to pay on a small lot with hired labor or hired teams, and you must not pay much for your wood lot, else interest and taxes will eat up the returns. To be of high quality, timber must be, to a considerable proportion of its height, free of limbs, which are the cause of knots; it must be tall; and it must not decrease rapidly in diameter from the butt to the top of the last log. In a dense stand of timber there is very great competition for sunlight among the individual trees, with the result that height growth is increased. Trees in crowded stands are taller than those in uncrowded stands of the same age. When the trees are crowded so that sunlight does not reach the lower branches, these soon die and become brittle they then fall off or are broken off by the wind, snow, or other agencies. By this process trunks are formed which are free from limbs, and hence of high quality. It is evident, therefore, that trees in the wood lot should be so crowded that the crown or top of each individual tree may be in contact with those of its nearest neighbors. A crowded stand of trees produces not only a larger number but also a greater proportion of high quality sawlogs than an uncrowded stand. So vital a matter is their forest shade that it does not do to set out young trees which have grown in the forest. Ordinarily, the exposure to the sunlight stunts them and often kills them. Nursery trees are best; the next best are trees that have grown at the edge of the woods. The actual value of woodland as pasture is small. One dollar per acre per year is probably a liberal estimate of the value of its forage. Thrifty fully stocked stands of timber will grow at the rate of 250 or more board feet of lumber per year. Adopting only 250 board feet as the growth and assuming the value of the standing timber to be from $5 to $8 per 1000 feet board measure, the value of the timber growth is from $1.25 to $2 per acre per year.