Excerpt from Proceedings of the Fourth Biennial Southern Silvicultural Research Conference: Atlanta, Georgia, November 4-6, 1986 This paper addresses ongoing technology developments for increased use of hardwoods. A wide range of technological and economic developments are described that are reducing the advantage of softwood over hardwood as a pre ferred wood raw material. These developments reflect a principle of human behavior which I call the leveling principle. The principle says that when less expensive resources are available, people develop new technologies to use less expensive resources. Thus, people seek to level the advantages of more expensive resources in order to improve economic efficiency. This kind of very rational human behavior presents complexity for silvi cultural researchers, because it means that as you focus your objectives on timber species that you think will have the highest value in the future, others will be trying consciously and vigorously to develop new technologies to utilize the less expensive timber species. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This 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.