or various purposes. The
bigger logs may be sold to the local lumber dealers and the smaller
material may be used for firewood. The remaining brush should be
withdrawn from the woodlot to prevent fire during the dry summer
months.

In marking trees for removal, a number of considerations are to be
borne in mind besides the elimination of dead, diseased and
suppressed trees. When the marker is working among crowding trees of
equal height, he should save those that are most likely to grow into
fine specimen trees and cut out all those that interfere with them.
The selection must also favor trees which are best adapted to the
local soil and climatic conditions and those which will add to the
beauty of the place. In this respect the method of marking will be
different from that used in commercial forestry, where the aim is to
net the greatest profit from the timber. In pure forestry practice,
one sees no value in such species as dogwood, ironwood, juneberry,
sumac and sassafras, and will therefore never allow those to grow up
in abundance and crowd out other trees of a higher market value. But
on private estates and in park woodlands where beauty is an
important consideration, such species add wonderful color and
attractiveness to the forest scene, especially along the roads and
paths, and should be favored as much as the other hardier trees. One
must not mark too severely in one spot or the soil will be dried out
from exposure to sun and wind. When the gaps between the trees are
too large, the trees will grow more slowly and the trunks will
become covered with numerous shoots or suckers which deprive the
crowns of their necessary food and cause them to "die back." Where
the trees are tall and slim or on short and steep hillsides, it is
also important to be conservative in marking in order that the stand
may not be exposed to the dangers of windfall. No hard-and-fast rule
can be laid down as to what would constitute a conservative
percentage of trees to cut down. This depends entirely on the local
conditions and on the exposure of the woodlot. But in general it is
not well to remove more than twenty per cent of the stand nor to
repeat the cutting on the same spot oftener than once in five or six
years. The first cutting will, of course, be the heaviest and all
subsequent cuttings wi