Page:A primer of forestry, with illustrations of the principal forest trees of Western Australia.djvu/40

34 all leaf litter must also prevent any increase in soil fertility which would otherwise result from the decomposition of humus. Such results of surface fires in the jarrah bush which are not commonly recognised must have the effect of slowing up the rate of growth of existing jarrah as well as preventing the development of healthy young trees in any open spaces which may chance to exist.

There are very many operations connected with the management of even such a simple forest which have not been mentioned, but the object of this chapter is to point out that the forester is essentially a sylviculturalist who raises crops of trees according to some recognised system with the object of maintaining a constant supply of timber for all time.

Like a farmer who seeks to establish a farm in uncleared scrub country, the forester must be given time to convert the "wild" into the "cultivated" forest, and criticism of his methods must be withheld until such time as he has had opportunity to bring order out of chaos.

If the making of a farm takes a farmer many years of hard work and oft-times bitter experience, how much longer must it take a forester whose crop may take one hundred years instead of one year to mature, but is correspondingly more valuable at the end of that time?