FOREST commissioner's REPORT. 



31 



woods. iNIoie or less evergreen growth was to be seen, fir' 

 with a little spruce mixed in, but the great bulk of it was of 

 hard wood s]3ecies. So clean was the blowdown that in places 

 half a mile could be travelled without* passing an old growth 

 tree. A liitle area of small standing spruce that we came 

 across was so much of a rarity that we stopped a few minutes, 

 ran a twine string round quarter of an acre and counted up 

 the trees that stood on it. The stand of spruce foots up in 

 all about 1,400 cubic feet per acre, the yearly addition to 

 which might perhaps l^e twenty-five or thirty. This it is 

 understood is for the place a very exceptional area. If this 

 northwest portion of Hobbstown could be proved to have 

 standing on it 200 cubic feet per acre, or what amounts to 

 much the same thing if it would cut on the average two cords 

 of spruce wood per acre, I should be surprised. 



Quarter Acre on Hobbstown Cut Ten Years Ago and Partly Bloavn Down 

 Since. Spruce Land, Rocky, Deeply Mossed, of Slow Growth. 



* Very many. 



The pleasantest memory I have of Hobbstown is of the 

 spring we found. "We had been u[) among the hills for five or 

 six hours of a hot June day looi-cing, travelling and sketching, 

 had eaten a dry lunch, and finally got pretty uncomfortable 

 for lack of water. Along in the middle of the afternoon we 

 struck north off the mountain, intending to get near the town 

 line, then swing east across the inlet, and so on down to 

 camp at the head of the pond. Scrambling down through 

 the blowdown, up and down through the fallen timl)er, forc- 

 ing a passage through the young hard woods that had grown 



