10 FOREST COMMISSIONER S REPORT. 



land reaching across the State from west to east, a high and 

 uneven country on which the head Avaters of all our great 

 rivers interlock. 



This great plateau whose axis, starting with the AYhite 

 Mountains of New Hampshire, passes across the Rangeley and 

 Moosehead lakes to Mars Hill, carries all the considerable 

 mountains of the State, and is itself elevated through more 

 than half its area to a height of over 1,000 feet above the sea. 



Now this plateau may be considered the chosen hahitat of 

 spruce. Spruce clothes the mountains and mixes with other 

 trees in the cover of ridges and low lands. 



From the Kennebec west, the well defined southern boun- 

 dary of the high lands marks as sharply the distribution of 

 spruce as an important portion of the native timber. On the 

 northeast, in the same way the lower lying and deep-soiled 

 Aroostook county has a fiir less proportion of spruce, the 

 characteristic timber of the region being the hard woods which 

 there reach their greatest perfection. 



Between these two limits, together with the northern slope, 

 is the spruce country of the State, stretching eastward to the 

 New Brunswick boundary, turning south to cover the whole 

 of Washington county and extending thence west along the 

 headlands and islands of the coast. 



Turning now to the characteristics and life history of 

 spruce, it was shown in the report of 1804 that the age of the 

 trees which furnish the merchantable spruce logs of the State 

 is something like 200 years, wnich is too small an estimate 

 for larsre loo-s and old growth timbers. The lous involved in 

 this study, numbering over 1,000, were taken at random on 

 the drives and mill yards of the State and averaged only four- 

 teen inches at the butt, with a length of thirty feet and top 

 diameter of nine inches. 



Concerning the biological nature of spruce it was shown 



from a number of considerations that it is hard to suppress 



and that it requires little from the soil. It covered formerly 



ne rocky islands along the coast, and it thrives on the steep 



