WOODPULP. 41 



in getting out logs for sawmills. Where no forestry is practiced, 

 the very small trees, as well as large ones, are cut. They are 

 sometimes sawed into short lengths of 4 feet, thus making the 

 work of handling the timber easier, although as the logs are too 

 small to sustain a man's weight it makes the river-driving harder. 

 It is usually considered more advantageous to cut the timber in 

 lengths of 12, 14, and 16 feet. If it has to be driven and sorted 

 from other timber this is undoubtedly the best method. Formerh T 

 only the small trees and the top logs were used for pulpwood, large 

 timber being reserved for the sawmills and cut into usual lengths; but 

 as the demand for woodpulp increased the stumpage became more 

 valuable for that purpose, and on some tracts all the spruce timber, 

 both large and small, was cut for pulpwood. The largest spruce in 

 the Adirondacks, so far as known (41 inches in diameter on the stump), 

 was cut for pulpwood. On some pulp jobs the bark is peeled from 

 the trees in the woods in order to save freight, and as the bark has no 

 commercial value it is left where the peeling or "rossing" is done. 

 A mass of dry bark-strippings, covering the ground thickly in places, 

 greatly increases the danger from fire. Much of the pulp timber in 

 the Adirondacks is hauled directly to some railway station, and from 

 there is shipped to the mills, as at the present market prices it will 

 bear transportation a long distance. In some places the pulp logs are 

 driven down some stream into a lake or pond near a railroad, where 

 by means of steam jack-works they are loaded on cars. In other 

 localities a long haul by teams is dispensed with by the construction of 

 water-slides or wooden troughs several miles in length, through which 

 a shallow stream of water carries the stipks to the railroad or to some 

 river, whence they are driven to the pulp mills in the same manner as 

 in a log drive. 



In the vicinit}' of Benson mines, St. Lawrence Count}', there is a 

 water-slide 3 miles long for convey ing pulpwood to the railroad. This 

 trough is 24 inches wide at the top and 10 at the bottom, with a depth 

 of 20 inches. It is capable of moving 60 cords per hour. The com- 

 pany operating this slide had at one time a pile of pulpwood 1,000 feet 

 long, 26 feet high, and 40 feet wide, all of which had been transported 

 from the woods to the railroad by this novel method. They had also 

 an additional slide in which sawed lumber was transported from the 

 mill to the railroad. The J. & J. Rogers Pulp Company, of Ausable 

 Forks, Essex County, N. Y., have on one of their jobs a water-slide 7 

 miles long, by which their pulp stock is carried to the Ausable River, 

 where it is driven to their mills. (Pis. XVII, XVIII, XIX.) 



In 1898 the total cut of logs in the Adirondack forests amounted to 

 544,234,207 feet, of which 229,581,918 feet was consumed in the pulp 

 mills. 



A peculiar effect of the woodpulp industry is the rise in value of 



