FOREST commissioner's REPORT. 183 



her, and in many localities and conditions of business been 

 passed entirely by. While neither of these items amounts 

 to very much in comparison with spruce, yet in the aggregate 

 they will appreciably swell the returns from our forest lands. 



Our great natural stock of hard woods, however, is the 

 main thing. The disadvantages which hold of these as com- 

 pared with our soft woods in regard to transportation and 

 waste in cutting are well understood. Railroad lumbering, 

 however, will largely meet the one, and new developments of 

 industry possibly will surmount the other. The small demand 

 too for such lumber must sometime mend. Our own people 

 will not always go to the most distant countries for their hard 

 woods. Fashion indeed may sometime work our way. It is 

 said that the fashion for black walnut a few years ago, which 

 all of us remember and most of us helped to feed, was created 

 by lumber dealers who kept it up as long as there was timber 

 to supply it. Who will jsay that our own birch and maple 

 are incapable of the same kind of manipulation ? 



I must repeat that I am not s})eaking of the outiook tor 

 wooded land along the railways and about towns, ^'P'"^'*^- 

 but of the great permanent forest areas of the State. On 

 these lands it is only in connection with spruce that exhaus- 

 tion need to be looked forward to, and for spruce indeed 

 only in some regions or in certain sizes and qualities of 

 timber. The districts reported on in the body of this 

 work are those where the question is most critical, chosen 

 for that very reason. There the situation can hardly be 

 called a xiark one. On the other large rivers the outlook is 

 no doul)t much clearer. The St. John still has lar<re stores 

 of virgin timber. The upper waters of the Penobscot have 

 been only very lightly cut. Men have not yet begun to sum 

 up their resources. 



Taking the State as a whole, I d()ul)t if the yearly produc- 

 tion of spruce is yet overcut. Assuming the amount of the 

 yearly cut at GOO millions board measure, that amounts only 

 to 30 feet per acre on the gross area of the State, perhaps 60 

 feet on what is actually spruce-bearing land. These general 



