MENSURATION IN FRANCE 



By D0NA1.D Bruce 

 Associate Professor of Forestry, University of California 



An unprecedented opportunity has been afforded by the Great War 

 for American foresters and lumbermen to come to know the forests and 

 the forestry of France. From this acquaintance much good undoubt- 

 edly will come. The object-lesson of a nation which, with its virgin 

 timber supply exhausted centuries ago, could still meet such tremendous 

 and imperative demands as those of the Allied armies with an adequate 

 timber reserve will be salutary, and the exchange of ideas with the 

 clear-thinking officers of the French "Service des Eaux et Forets" will 

 perhaps help us to see more clearly the objectives which we in America 

 are striving to reach. 



The following comments represent the impression made on one 

 American forester by French mensuration: 



The cubic meter is, of course, the standard unit of measure, and this 

 is applied to both round products and lumber. Cordwood and the like 

 is measured by the "stere" (a stacked cubic meter) or by several local 

 varieties of the "corde." Both stere and corde may be dismissed with 

 the comment that they are neither better nor worse than our own 

 stacked-wood units. A slight increase in accuracy is obtained by the 

 fairly common practice of separating cordwood into three more or less 

 definite size classes: (i) guar tier, or wood more than 5 inches in diam- 

 eter, and hence big enough to be split; (2) rondin, or round wood be- 

 tween five inches and about 2 inches in diameter; and (3) charhonnette, 

 or wood from two inches to one inch, and so called because often con- 

 verted into charcoal. As a result, the actual wood content of a stere 

 of any single class is more constant than where all are intermingled in 

 varying proportions, as with us. This refinement is the logical outcome 

 of high prices. (In certain regions beech cordwood sold for over 

 $12.50 a cord, stumpage, even in 1917, before fuel prices had been much 

 affected by war conditions.) It might be remarked, however, that on 

 account of the disadvantage of the stere as a unit, many fuel-wood 

 sales are made by the ton, with the degree of dryness covered by varia- 

 tions in price. 



To return to the standard unit, the cubic meter, the measurement of 

 the contents of a sawlog is usually by the Huber formula, which con- 

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