742 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



STUDENTS OF THE OREGON FOREST SCHOOL. 



An Estimating Crew 



these crews, usually of five men each. are in charge of the 

 upper classmen 



with transit and stadia along the prin- 

 cipal ridges and streams. Between 

 these meandered lines the cruise lines 

 were run , due north and south or east and 

 west, as conditions required. A 10 per 

 cent cruise was made, using the familiar 

 Forest Service gridiron method. Dis- 

 tances between control lines were 

 chained except where, in a few cases, 

 men were experienced enough to pace. 

 Pacing, in this country, was no easy 

 task, since the ground was pretty 

 thickly strewn with down timber and 

 since, on nearly every line, there was a 

 difference in elevation of one to four 

 thousand feet. Elevations were taken 

 with aneroid barometers, checked by 

 an instrument read every half hour in 

 camp. 



The estimating crews, usually con- 

 sisting of five men each, were in charge 

 of upper classmen, who, in addition to 

 acting as straw bosses, did the topo- 

 graphic work. Another man ran com- 

 pass and carried the head end of a chain 

 or paced, another tallied, while two 

 rooks, armed with Biltmore sticks, 

 took diameters and threw them into the 

 tallyman. Five Forest Service men 



and three Forest School professors 

 acted as inspectors of the w^hole job. 

 None of the inspectors got lost, but 

 occasionally a crew" was lost by the 

 inspector. 



To the forestry student of the Eastern 

 United States, this cruising expedition 

 would sure have been some experience. 

 Imagine estimating trees up to 8 feet in 

 diameter and 225 feet high, and fancy 

 areas of this stuff going better than 

 150,000 board feet to the acre. Besides, 

 the little area of 10,000 acres cruised 

 out, was a veritable arboretmii. Doug- 

 las fir, western hemlock and western red 

 cedar were the principal species. But 

 shot in among them, here and there, 

 were mountain hemlock, Engleman 

 spruce, incense cedar, noble fir, lovely 

 fir, w^estern grand fir, white pine, 

 lodgepole pine, whitebark pine, yellow 

 cypress, western yellow pine and western 

 yew, with alder, and Oregon maple 

 along the streams. To add interest to the 

 work, an occasional deer was sighted, and 

 fresh elk tracks were seen, while one 

 crew got great amusement for a half 

 hour, watching a black bear eat grass in 

 an open glade. 



