FOREST commissioner's REPORT. 65 



lower towns on the river tend to black orowth. Tlio upper 

 towns on the other hand are covered })redominantly with hard 

 wood. Generally, however, there is a strong mixture, the 

 proportion of young spruce on the upper territory being so 

 far as could be learned almost uniformly high. Continued 

 production of spruce is thus assured, while there is the further 

 and verv srreat advantauc that cuUed-out ijrowth does not so 

 nuich l)l()w down. 



Fourth. The growth on the river if it were all cut by 

 current methods to a close saw log standard and kept so cut 

 has been set at a little less than twenty million feet per year, 

 or about a million feet for a full town. Prol)ably growth at 

 the present time balances more than half the cut. By a little 

 management for the purpose in systematically leaving young 

 timber to ofrow and in such favorino- of youno- trees as would 

 cost no more if only men are trained to it, this yearly growth 

 could, I believe, ])e largely increased.* On the other hand 

 harder cutting if Introduced and continued can push the 

 yearly growth down till it reaches a very small figure. 

 Growth is like interest. If a man's investment is small, no 



*A yeai' later, after a season's studj- of tlio Guniuui methods of handling forest 

 land, I feel like being bolder and more definite in all statements of this character. 

 I think that by the introduction of economical and carefully studied manage- 

 ment, the principles of which might well approve themselves both to German 

 experience and American common sense, that the production of the JMoosc river 

 drainage could be kept at double the figure named. That means two million feet 

 per 5'ear per township instead of one, and a permanent maintenance of the 

 recent average cut of the whole drainage. This I mean as a practical proposition. 

 I do not have in mind tree i^lanting or pruning or any other such expensive 

 processes as are attached in the popular mind to European forest methods. I 

 mean only economical, conservative, studied handling which it would be for the 

 interest of tlie owners of expensive mill plants dependent for their raw mate- 

 rial on spruce to maintain. It seems strange, yet I fully believe it to be true, that 

 the recent yearly cut of 1-20 millions on the Kennebec, a cut that has stripped the 

 drainage of its old spruce timber, that has sent men scouring parts of the river 

 after pole.s that won't near hold a man's weight above water, that has shoved 

 the producing power of the land down to a fraction of what we take from it- 

 strange to think that this amount of lumber the same country if from the begin- 

 ning it had been treated with conservatism and care could readily grow. Yet it 

 seems certainly to be so. The recent annual cut of spruce amounts to less than 

 sixty feet per acre on the total natural spruce— producing area of the drainage, 

 while the total cut thus far can hardly make an average of more than two M. 

 These facts speak strongly for the way in which we have wasted the resources 

 and damaged the capacity of tlie land. 



