FORES'T COMMISSIONER'S REPORT. 25 



camp on Spencer Bay town, just east of Moosehead lake. Start- 

 infij at once for the chopping crews, they were found at work on 

 rolling land, covered well with spruce and a variety of other woods. 

 The ground was covered with moss and leaves, and the soil while 

 stony was fine, plentiful and moist, furnishing apparently all the 

 conditions for rapid growth. 



Our first business was with single trees. Spreading our work 

 among different crews, and keeping always close to the choppers, 

 typical trees were picked as they were felled, their surroundings 

 noted in detail, and measures taken upon each of them as earlier 

 described. Two days work and about twenty-five trees yielding a 

 fair representation of the site, we put on our snow shoes and 

 stepped out of the choppings for our sample acre A square of 209 

 feet was measured off and divided into convenient strips. Then, 

 one man with calipers and the other with blanks and pencil, we set 

 to work to score every tree, to describe them all ind vidually or by 

 classes, and to estimate the length and top diameter of all mer- 

 chantable logs. No attempt was made to find an average acre. 

 For the purpose of the time one which was well covered, and rep- 

 resented rather the highest development of the country, was pre- 

 ferred. 



While the country had been cut through some sixteen years 

 before, the particular piece of ground pitched on had evidently 

 escaped the ax. There were on the acre twelve trees above eigh- 

 teen inches in diameter, twenty-three between fourteen and eigh- 

 teen inches, and thirty-six more between ten and fourteen. So far 

 from market, smaller trees than that could hardly be said to have 

 a money value. With an eye to the future history of the laud, 

 however, it is well worth notice that there were 136 trees between 

 that size and about three inches, while over 700 still smaller spruce 

 were counted. Some large yellow birch, and numerous white birch, 

 beech, maple and small fir were present, but it was distinctively a 

 spruce acie. The amount of spruce lumber on this acre was some- 

 thing like seven or eight thousand feet, and the cubic contents of 

 trees over ten inches, including the whole stem but not the 

 branches, about 2050 cubic feet. 



The method of finding the annual growth of single trees is else- 

 where described. Obtaining that value for each of the trees meas- 

 ured on the site, the results are arranged for different sizes of trees 

 and the resulting values taken over to the trees on the acre and ap- 

 plied to them by number. The details of the whole process may 



