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sent by the Sierra Flume and Lumber Company to New York, in 

 which city it is expected it can be sold for a less price than Eastern 

 pine. Boards forty and forty-two inches wide are easily obtained, 

 which fact calls to mind the time when it was easy to build a house 

 in Maine that should contain no board less than a yard wide, and in 

 which no knots could be found. The yellow pine has been intro- 

 duced during the past year, by the company named above, and is 

 now extensively used as flooring, inside work, and in all places 

 where fine finish is desired. It has a smoother grain, and is stronger 

 than redwood, and is said to take paint better. 



California yellow and sugar pine is being shipped to foreign coun- 

 tries in competition with Eastern lumber of the same nature. The 

 fir is found only in the more elevated regions of the Sierra. It is an 

 odorless wood, and is now being used in manufacturing packing 

 boxes for articles requiring an inodorous wood. In this respect it is 

 superior to the white pine of the East. Spruce is also abundant out 

 in the mountains, and is used for building timbers and flooring. It 

 is harder than redwood, and lasts as long. 



EXPORTATION OF CALIFORNIA FOREST TREE SEEDS FOR FOREIGN 



COUNTRIES. 



The governments of several European countries begin to look to 

 California to furnish them with trees with which to keep up their 

 forests. Austria, Germany, England, New Zealand, and Australia 

 are large purchasers of seeds for forest planting. It is estimated that 

 over ten thousand dollars worth of seeds are annually exported from 

 this State to foreign countries, and the demands for seeds of the best 

 varieties of forest trees exceeds the supply. The favorite tree for 

 forest culture seems to be the Oregon pine, or yellow fir. For ship- 

 building this wood is considered as good as imported oak. A vessel 

 built of this lumber eighteen years ago, at Eastport, was recently 

 examined, and was found to be as sound as the day on which she 

 was launched. California redwood is being planted extensively in 

 Australia and New Zealand, and the German Government has 

 recently sent to this city to obtain samples of California lumber with 

 the seeds of various forest trees growing in the State. 



LUMBERING IN CALIFORNIA AND THE EAST. 



The business of lumbering is conducted in a different manner here 

 from that of the East. This is necessitated by the difference in the 

 physical formation of the country, which allows of large rivers only 

 in the interior valleys, thus depriving the lumbermen of the streams 

 by which their lumber could be brought down from the mountains 

 and forests to places where it could be manufactured. In the East 

 the season of cutting logs, or logging, as it is called, is the winter, 

 when the snows in the forests permit the use of sleds, by which the 

 logs are easily transported to the banks and the surface of frozen 

 streams. Piled high on the ice they there remain until spring, when 

 the high waters caused by the melting snow transport them to the 

 mills below. 



In this State there is little of this log-driving. The small streams 

 along the coast and among the mountains will float a few logs down 

 to the mills, but will not accommodate immense drives such as float 



