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the average Wisconsin farmer acts as if his woodlot were about as vital 
to the future as the horse-and-buggy or the spinning-wheel. By cutting 
off the old and ir      off the young trees, he is whittling at both 
ends of the woodlot as a farm institution. He is exterminating produc- 
tive woods as an element in the land-use pattern of the dairy belt. 
Is he doing this e!ibera l   because he expects, when his woods are 
gone, to haul coal or to burn Mr. Roosevelt's electricity? Is he doing 
it regretfully, as a makeshift, until better times enable him to retrench?

Or is he doing it thoughtlessly, unaware that he is signing checks on 
capital? I don't know, but our self-scrutiny on wildlife crops squarely 
raises the question of the dispensability or indispensability of farm 
woods. mand atL; wild    ana. 
On flat unsoiled soils I think the woodless farm is possible. 
We have plenty of such already. We also have, in plenty, the coverless 
marsh. But on eroding land, and on all hilly land, it is clear by now 
that not even pasture is a safe cover for the steeper slopes. A penalty--

erosion and floods--attaches to the use of vulnerable slopes and banks 
for tame crops. That penalty accrues, in part, to the owner. It 
accrues, in part, to the subjoining owners, but these social penalties 
we reserve for later discussion. The present point is that vulnerable 
slopes present the       clear case of land which the individual owner 
must leave wild, 
We may generalize, then, by saying that the dedication of 
farm land to wild cover is inevitable only where erosiQn threatens. and 
even there it is, , e                   the owner1 6ptinnal whether 
-he deliberately encourage  timber or animals.