42 FOREST commissioner's REX'ORT. 



found, their appearance and the surrounding circumstances pointed 

 to the conclusion that they were old growth trees that escaped the 

 fire. The dimension named above may therefore be set as the 

 upper limit for cedar of this age grown up in this way. Vastly 

 more numerous were the trees of somewhat smaller dimensions. 

 In swamps where the trees grew thickly the usual diameter was 

 perhaps four to six inches. Numerous such swamps were seen, 

 closely filled with clean straight trunks evidently to be the source 

 of large supplies in the future. 



The concerns lumbering along the line of the new road in the 

 winter of 1893-4 were as a rule cutting pine. An exception was a 

 crew cutting hard wood to saw into veneer, the source of supply 

 proving to be an unburnt tract of about a square mile in the east 

 part of the town of Brownville. Otherwise pine was the staple of 

 the cut. Township Long A for instance with other districts on the 

 burnt tract are known among lumbermen as '-latter pine" country. 

 Arising from the fact that pine is the onl^' timber there which has 

 arrived at a condition to be profitably cut, the term "latter pine" 

 has fuither a restricted or technical meaning. It refers to the 

 short, stout, limby timber found on most such tracts in distinction 

 both from the old growth "timber"' pine and from the longer bodied 

 and cleaner "sapling." — varieties of tbe tree which seem to be due, 

 not to heredity through the seed, but mainh , at least, to the influ- 

 ence of circumstances. This class of timber is familiar enough in 

 the State, both in the maiket and standing. Jn the market most of 

 it appears as boxboards, though butt cutts from the trees frequent- 

 ly are sawed into clapboards. It is frequently cut as young as 

 forty or fifty years of age — has been cut on this tract for more than 

 twenty years, and places are now being culled over a second time. 

 Good sized trees were two to three feet through, sixty to seventy 

 feet in height, and presented a total bulk far greater than individ- 

 uals of any surrounding species. 



Examination was made of this timber at numerous points on the 

 burnt tract, while at three different places full measures were taken 

 of the tree? for the records of the United States Forestry Division. 

 As just mentioned, they were, so far as they went, the dominant 

 growth. Far beyond serious limitation by other species, the pines 

 did not as a rule crowd one another, in fact, generally, even in 

 these so-called pine countries, they seem to have come up very 

 sparsely. 



