FOREST COMMISSIONER S REPORT. 



105 



his calculations. Under these circumstances I submit that 

 complaint about the rapacity of lumbermen is both futile and 

 foolish. If the State's interest is different from that of pri- 

 vate owners, then let the State in some efficient and business- 

 like way look after it. 



But is the State's interest different from that of private 

 owners? After much field study bearing directly on this point, 

 and considerable thinking over the questions involved, I for 

 one am not entirely clear on that point. There are balanced 

 and complicated considerations here, a multitude of circum- 

 stances and possibilities coming in from every direction which 

 render a decision very difficult. The rapidity of growth and 

 the requirements of different trees, the risk of fire and insects 

 and the liability of thinned growth to blowdowns, the future 

 of the market in regard to different kinds of woods, depend- 

 ent as that is on the discoveries of science, the development 

 of business, and the amount and accessibility of the world's 

 supplies — all these affect the question materially. To reckon 

 in such circumstances is not within the limits of possibility. 

 A lump judgment, fallible as that must be, is the only open 

 course. 



Trees Standing on an Acre of Land in Grafton, Oxford County, Maine. 



Diameter- 

 inches. 



-a 





Over 18 . 



15-18 .... 



12-14 



10 and 11 

 8 and 11 

 6 and 7 

 3-6 



Under 3 



2,000 



This study, however, has to do only with those factors of 

 the problem which can be studied in the Androscoggin woods. 

 In order to get some more facts of that nature before our 



