FOREST commissioner's REPORT. " 147 



One hundred feet per acre then may he taken as the in)per 

 limit for growth upon the hmd, the reward of a cuttinir policy 

 which is practical and husincss-like but which has regard not 

 merely to immediate profit but sacrifices something in the presT 

 ent to the future value of the land. The yearly growth of a full 

 townshi}) at tliis rate is about two millions, and that of the 

 whole drainage of the Androscoggin in Maine from fifty to 

 sixty. Certainly, as things are running now, and as they are 

 likely to run in the immediate future, no such yield is to be 

 expected. On much land, and for many years, not half of 

 that amount. The close and systematic cutting practiced, 

 equalled nowhere else in the State so far as I have seen, 

 shoves down the producing capacity of the land to an ex- 

 tremely small figure, and defers to a period distant from forty 

 to one hundred years the time when it will be worth while 

 to again cut spruce from the land. But this condition is not 

 witlK)ut its hopeful aspect. It is due to the thorough-going way 

 in which business is carried on on the Androscoggin, to the 

 system and organizing ability of Androscofifoin business men. 

 Those men when the facts are known, if they warrant it, will 

 be far more likely to apply them to advantage in the shape of 

 a conservative cutting })olicy than those who still practice the 

 wasteful and hap-hazard methods of forty years a^o. 



The Androscoggin drainage from the spruce point of view 

 is the best worth study of all the rivers of the State. It is 

 also the one in my judgment on which a conservative forest 

 policy is likely to go first into eftect. 



As to the future of the region further and more definitely, 

 that is so much a matter of the future, as one might say — so 

 much depends on the development of business and the deter- 

 minations of a few men — that prediction must be made with 

 very larije conditions. The Androscosfgin mills we know 

 are highly favored in position. Even now they bring from 

 Canada by rail a portion of their pulpwood supply. As to 

 their own natural territory, however, this can be said — and I 

 cannot believe that any man who knows the volume of spruce 



