REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 343 



The figures in the accompanying tables indicate that 110,000 acres are being cut 

 o\-er annually by the axemen, from which area the spruce and pine are removed 

 entirely, together with the greater part of the hemlock. If the cutting continues at 

 this rate, the supply of spruce and pine in the Adirondack forests, outside of that 

 owned by the State, will be exhausted in sixteen years. 



At the same time, it should be remembered that through these operations 

 $700,000 worth of raw material is annually converted into cash and added to the 

 wealth of our State. This depletion of our forest is in some measure offset by the 

 important and valuable industries dependent on this same production, and the fact 

 that in the manufacture and transportation of this product over $5,000,000 are paid 

 out annually in wages, the work furnishing steady and profitable employment for a 

 large number of people. 



In 1896, of the 430,109,436 feet cut and removed, 374,278,182 feet, or eighty per 

 cent., was spruce, nearly half of which was consumed in the pulp mills. The demand 

 for pulp stock is increasing so rapidl\- that in a short time, perhaps a year or so, the 

 pulp mills will consume more spruce than the saw mills. Already spruce stumpage is 

 worth more for pulp than for sawing timber. A few years ago the pulp men 

 contented themseh'es in taking only the small logs, lea\ing the middle-sized and 

 largest ones to be sawed into lumber. But now many of our pulp mills use their 

 entire stock of spruce logs, large and small, in the manufacture of paper. The largest 

 spruce tree ever cut in the Adirondacks was recently manufactured into pulp. This 

 tree measured forty-one inches on the stump, and its shaft was cut into twenty-two 

 pieces, each four feet long. There was more spruce timber cut in the Adirondack 

 forests during either of the last two years than was ever cut before in any year since 

 the first axeman entered those woods. Then, again, many of the pulpmen, in their 

 cutting, take the small spruce trees which hitherto were always left by the lumbermen. 

 Upon these small trees depends the future supply of spruce. With their removal the 

 extinction of the species must follow on all tracts where this short-sighted method 

 is used. 



Included in the figures for the spruce is a small amount of balsam, say two per 

 cent. This species seldom attains any large size, the ma.ximum growth seldom 

 exceeding fourteen inches in diameter on the stump.* For the most part, the 

 balsams run from eight to ten inches in diameter. But the lumbermen generally cut 

 the twelve-inch trees and mi.x them in with the spruce. After the logs are sawed 

 there is little difference in the appearance of the timber, although the balsam is 



*At Lake Placid, N. Y., on the grounds of the Placid Park Club, there is a balsam thirty inches 

 in diameter two feet above the ground. Professor Charles H. Peck, State Botanist, has identified 

 this tree as a balsam. 



