76 FOREST commissioner's report. 



spruce, mixed with scattering pines of large size, but poor 

 quality. No axe had ever been struck into it. 



To this black growth succeeded a genuine swamp. It was 

 full of poor cedar, hackmatack, and stunted spruce, was a 

 quarter of a mile wide, and extended N. N. E. and S. S. W^ 

 as far as could be seen from the top of one of its tallest trees. 

 Getting out of that, hiirher ground was struck, asain a spruce 

 country, where cutting had for a space been followed by 

 clean blow-down. Clamberino; through this, viro;in timber 

 was soon seen to the right and after several hundred yards 

 my easterly course brought me into it. Then for a mile I 

 travelled in sfround of varvino; character and value which, 

 however, had never been cut. Most of the land was mossy 

 and rather iiat, covered with an open stand of spruce and 

 pine running several thousand feet of saw logs per acre. A 

 "little had spruce and hard woods mixed. An area was flat,, 

 deep-mossed land, with poor drainage and stunted timber. 

 How big a territory there was here I cannot say. The swamp 

 was not very far to the left. Old cuttings, too, were some- 

 where to the right, for at two points the head of the works 

 barelv touched and crossed the course I was running. No 

 impression, however, had been made on this timber. The 

 lumberman, working on a stumpage permit which left him free 

 to go where he chose, probably driven, too, by the price of 

 stumpage and of logs to use every advantage of his position 

 in order to come out of his little enterprise whole, had sim- 

 ply struck for the bodies of timl)cr which were thickest and 

 most available, leaving the corners and thin places to take 

 care of themselves. Yet this town, like the Bradstreet town, 

 men will tell you has been cut over. It is being cut now for the 

 second time. 



from'The^^ The facts just stated — and they are thoroughly 

 comn'ed. typical — throw light on several matters that it is 

 worth while to point out. For one thing they lielp us to see 



how the rule arose that land can be cut over every twenty 

 years and a crop of lumber obtained. Of course that is so if 



