Excerpt from Practical Forestry: A Treatise on the Propagation, Planting, and Cultivation, With a Description, and the Botanical and Popular Names of All the Indigenous Trees of the United States, Both Evergreen and Deciduous, Together With Notes on a Large Number of the Most Valuable ExThe preface of a book is usually considered the proper place for an author to give his reasons for writing it. Following the usual custom in this matter, I may say that I am a son of a carpenter, who followed the business of building bridges, barns, houses, and similar structures, and my earliest recollections take me back to the time when I spent many an hour in the shop, twirling and unrolling the long, silky pine and white wood shavings, and at these times I heard discussions almost daily in regard to wood, timber, trees, their quality, value, and variety. My father also owned a farm in the heavily wooded regions of Western New York, and be highly appreciated the value of certain kinds of trees growing thereon, for his practiced eye would measure the size of a hewn stick of timber that could be made from a giant oak, beech, or other kind of tree as it stood in the forest, as well as make a very close guess as to the number of feet of boards or plank that could be produced from the great white-woods, hemlocks, or pines, of those regions. Brought up amid such surroundings, and early taught to use tools and work in wood myself, it was but natural that I should take an interest in Forestry, and endeavor to learn something of the value of trees and forests.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.