28o Forestry Quarterly. 



tee the permanence of the lumbering industry and of the market 

 for agricultural products. 



Field examinations of lands applied for under this act cover, as a 

 rule, only small, isolated areas. The topographic maps of the Geo- 

 logical Survey are on too small a scale and are not sufficiently ac- 

 curate to give more than a very general idea of the boundaries of 

 agricultural lands. Nor can the plats of the land office surveys be 

 relied upon for details. The field notes of the surveys show only 

 distances along section lines, and the topograpry of the interior of 

 the sections is necessarily only sketched in by draftsmen in the of- 

 fice. The courses of the roads, streams, etc., are therefore shown 

 only in a general way, and can never be used as starting points from 

 which to determine limits of agricultural lands. The only safe way, 

 on surveyed lands, is to start at section or quarter-section corners, 

 and measure along the section lines and, at stated intervals, at right 

 angles to them, using the compass, and noting distances and platting^ 

 results on the map immediately. Experience has shown that this 

 measuring can be done very satisfactorily by pacing, after the man- 

 ner adopted by timber cruisers. From 110 to 113 paces representing- 

 20 rods or a tally. Four tallies carry one across one side of a 40- 

 acre square, and eight tallies make a half mile. This is as great a 

 distance as it is safe to depend upon pacing, without checking up 

 on an established corner. This work must be done very carefully, 

 and the compass used continually. 



Mapping is done on the scale of four inches to the mile. Types 

 of forest cover are mapped in by the use of colored pencils. The 

 usual types in the Priest River reserve, Idaho and Washington, are 

 Commercial Forest, Non-Commercial Forest, Woodland, Brushland, 

 Open Meadow, Alder Bottom, Burn, and Cultivated Land. 



Except in the very narrow meadows or valleys, it is most satis- 

 factory to run the boundaries upon the rectangular system. A very 

 convenient way, on surveyed land, is to consider each 40-acre square 

 as being sub-divided into sixteen little squares, each 20 rods on a 

 side and containing 2 1-2 acres. By mapping in the boundaries of 

 the different types of cover very carefully, the boundaries to be 

 recommended may readily be run upon these imaginary lines, mak- 

 ing 20-rod jogs, so as to give the applicant almost exactly the agri- 

 cultural land desired, and excluding the balance. 



Where the agricultural land is in a very narrow strip, it is some- 

 times necessary to make jogs of less than 20 rods, and occasionally 



