28 FOKEST commissioner's REPORT. 



they be than these — study of the production of the individual tree 



study of sample areas having homogeneous and representative con- 

 ditions—study in respect to topography, soil and stand of the 

 whole region and a summary' of its growth? 



It is possible that the results here arrived at may seem to practi- 

 cal men of small or remote value. Admitting that for immediate 

 use that may be the case, it is yet contended that slow, funda- 

 mental work, work which combines mathematics and biology in the 

 effort to establish fundamental principles and relations, has in it the 

 promise of the largest results. It will, perhaps, be well, however, 

 to take up and answer as well as may be some of the questions 

 asked by practical men. Those questions are all akin, all turn on 

 the amount of growth, the value of young trees, the proper time to 

 cut Quite frequently the question takes this form. Will the growth 

 of timber land pay six per ceni? Time and again I have been con- 

 fronted with that question and its first answer has generally been 

 in the shape of several more. Per cent on what? On the value of 

 timber land at current rates? On the value of the land stripped? 

 On the value of the standing timber? Or on what? 



Referring both for definite information and a basis for judgment as 

 to other conditions than those represented, to the results already 

 worked out, I might still repeat here the advice given to the owners 

 of a township of nearly virgin spruce on the west line of the State, 

 who had begun to strip it of all salable timber. Having been on 

 similar land in the same region, land which sixteen years before 

 had been culled over, and at the time of nn' visit was being cut 

 through the second time, I was able to give the information that 

 young trees if left, tiees now sa}' from six to ten inches in breast 

 diameter, would probably grow, if no accident befell them, on the 

 average an inch in eight 3'ears. These facts were given for 

 what they were w^orth, and it is worthy of note that they confirmed 

 the judgment of one partner that such trees were worth more to 

 grow than to cut, and perhaps have by this time changed the cut- 

 ting policy of the concern. 



There is one business man in the State who has studied this mat- 

 ter of growth to good purpose, and established a policy of manage- 

 ment as a result. He is Hon. Turner Buswell of Skowhegan, 

 manager of the lands of the estate of Ex-Governor Cobutn. By 

 count on 500 logs Mr. Buswell determined that the average rale of 

 growth in diameter of spruce is about an inch in ten years.* Now 



*For fuller notes on this study see p. 33, of tliis report. 



