FOREST COMMISSIONER S REPORT. 103 



the floor of the virgin forest, and when the over- peJl^tg^^ce 

 growth is cut it still persists and sends its leaders anfi^flr.''^ 

 up through the brush and tops. A new growth of it may 

 start too. And it is especially noteworthy that mixed with it 

 in both cases there is almost sure to be a proportion of spruce. 

 This may be numerically small, but potentially it is quite 

 otherwise. Fir, we all know, is a short-lived tree w4iich only 

 in very favorable circumstances reaches a merchantable size. 

 Spruce on the other hand is long-lived and persistent. Its 

 infant mortality nuist be small. Its presence on a piece of 

 ground is sure to mean something. 



Perhaps the most valual)le coml)ination possible ^ ^.^ ^^^^^^ 

 is white birch with spruce. This on old yards and ^vi"t«^"ciJ- 

 sluice-ways was seen not infrequently. A thick mat of birches, 

 perhaps mixed with other species, covered the ground, run- 

 ning at say three years of age from two to three feet high. 

 Among these was a generous sprinkling of spruces of the same 

 age but only six to eight inches high. Now the future of 

 such growth is not uncertain. The l)irch will brins; a crop to 

 maturity in tifty or sixty years, a crop that if spread exten- 

 sively over the country would be not greatly inferior in value 

 to its predecessor. At that time, however, the young spruce 

 will not have reached even pulp log size. To do this in 

 thick growths which alone produce much material on the land 

 — that is to a:row logs ten to twelve inches through at four 

 feet from the ground — at least one hundred years will be re- 

 quired. Observations on this point are recorded in another 

 portion of this report. 



To return to the land immediately in question — mixed 

 growth I will repeat from which the spruce has been cleanly 

 cut, the spruce having formed so large a proportion of the 

 original .stand that the land is now in very ragged shape, — 

 the new growth springing up is quite prominently white 

 birch. With this are other hard woods, prominently some of 

 dwarf size and short life which have little bearing either help- 

 ful or harmful on the future of the land. The cleaner the 

 cut, the larger the ratio according to my observation that the 



