FOREST commissioner's REPORT. 63 



grow fifty board feet per acre or one million feet to every 

 thirty sqnare miles of productive land. Now the total 

 area drained l)y the river tiuiires up from the map (J")!) 

 square miles. Water areas and bog as near as I am able 

 to ascertain, amount to forty-eight square miles, burnt 

 lands amount to fifty. We will add twelve more for 

 the cleared land at Jackman and elsewhere, combined with 

 unproductive mountain to}). One hundred and ten square 

 miles of waste are so found, leaving the net producing lands 

 on the drainage at 540. At thirty square miles to the million, 

 we therefore get eighteen million feet of spruce as the yearly 

 growth on the drainage, the amount which as a yearly cut, the 

 land would permanently maintain. At the present time the 

 yearly growth is probably greater because much of the terri- 

 tory is not yet cut as severely as the land upon which our 

 figures have been based. On the other hand l)y closer cutting 

 the yearly growth might be pushed down. I have been 

 speaking of the yearly growth on the drainage were it all cut 

 to the same standard as the harder cut towns, and were this 

 cut followed up at not long periods by others of a similar 

 character. 



Now the saw timber standing on the drainage of 

 Moose river accordino^ to the best information I have forecast, 

 been able to get together, amounts to something like 400 

 millions. This is lumbermen's estimate, and it may be counted 

 ontounderrun the truth. It includes spruce and pine. The logs 

 cut on Moose river, ascertained from the log-driving company, 

 have averaged for the last seventeen years between thirty-nine 

 and forty millions, which gives us standing about ten years' sup- 

 ply. Growth considered, however, it will be some years 

 later before this cut, even if confined to its present standard, 

 will of necessit}^ shrink. The time is not far distant, how- 

 ever, pro])ably not more than twenty years at the most, when 

 the yearly cut will have to come down — if the figures stated 

 in this study prove correct and no change is made in the 

 policy maintained toward the land — to about half its })resent 

 figure. The time might, of course, be postponed still further 



