CURRENT LITERATURE. 

 Henry S. Graves, In Charge. 

 Forest Mensuration. By Henry Solon Graves, M. A. New York. 

 John Wiley & Sons, 1906. Pp. 458. 



This first American professional textbook on one branch of 

 forestry treats the subject with a completeness which it has never 

 received in the English language and places it at once on a level 

 with such well known German works on forest mensuration as that 

 of Udo Muller, Schwappach, Stoetzer, etc. 



The distinctively American part consists in the chapters on 

 log rules, in which Prof. Graves elaborates further the contents of 

 his Woodman's Handbook. We cannot let the opportunity pass of 

 expressing our regret that the author did not more strenuously 

 point out the undesirability of these absurd units of measurement, 

 forty-five in number. We admit that, as long as they are used in 

 practice, we cannot help using them, but it would have helped the 

 introduction of one proper standard of measurement, the cubic foot, 

 or better stil^ the cubic meter, if it had been pointed out that by 

 multiplication of the cubic contents of groups of logs which prac- 

 tically admit of no dispute, with simple factors of conversion, the 

 miller can come to a judgment of board foot contents of his cut 

 as close as the logscale; and after all a logrule is nothing but a 

 judgment of what the cubic contents may produce in saw material. 



The same completeness with which this part of the volume is 

 treated and the same clearness and simplicity of statement char- 

 acterize the rest of the manual, in which the needs of the American 

 practitioners are constantly kept in mind. Several matters which 

 are not found in European manuals, but are decidedly germane to 

 the subject, are to be found. Such are the discussion of various 

 methods of estimating standing timber and of short cuts to determine 

 volumes of trees; volume tables with number of logs and merchant- 

 able lengths and graded volume tables, which in European practice 

 are more removed from a forester's ken and interest; an elabora- 

 tion of strip surveys, which, although originally used a century or 

 so ago, have become obsolete in settled countries; and various refer- 

 ences to the growth of tropical trees. 



All parts of the subject are fully treated and we find only 

 few omissions of minor import. In all chapters there is enough of 



