284 Forestry Quarterly 



ton, and happened to take out my belt axe to smooth off a radius 

 for the purpose. There was a big woodsman standing near, and 

 the attitude of the whole crew was well illustrated by his excla- 

 mation: "Ah," he says, "I know now what that is; that's George 

 Washington with his little hatchet." 



In those three winters from 1892 to '95, I rather think I did 

 more stem analysis work than any single man in this country 

 has done since. At any rate, I am entirely sure I went through 

 more hardships than any man engaged in such work has since 

 experienced. Camps in those years and in New England were 

 very different matters from those to which you are accustomed. 



This was the start — simple work that hardly paid wages, and 

 had to be dovetailed in with land surveying in the summer to 

 make a living; but as one read and thought the subject grew. In 

 fact, after a time the thing looked so big that one could not 

 possibly leave it. I got ahead by working over the data I had 

 gathered and applying it to problems then actually being thought 

 about by lumbermen of the region — rate of growth of timber 

 in percentage and per acre. Of course, methods with the small 

 resources available were crude, and results only indicative, but 

 we defined our ideas by the process. Finally in 1886 I wrote 

 a report of 250 pages for the State of Maine along the general 

 lines just above indicated, and that gave me my next oppor- 

 tunity — service for a big lumber company in New England. That 

 began in 1898 and ended in 1901, covering some severe work, but 

 productive in the way of direct results and of training through 

 experience. I wish more of our so-called foresters — such by 

 virtue of a diploma and particularly their teachers — could have 

 such sobering and illuminating experience and enough of it. 



My service with the old company consisted first in securing, 

 through inspection, economy of timber in the company's logging 

 operation ; second, of putting their property under a map system 

 which enabled them to manage it to the best advantage; third, 

 of working out, where practicable, a system of conservative cut- 

 ting on their own land. This involved living in the woods about 

 nine months in the year, in the summer cruising or running sur- 

 veying parties, in the winter beating up and down the logging 

 roads on foot, or riding from camp to camp in a sleigh or on 

 horseback. 



It is an inspiring thing for a man to be a pioneer in anything, 

 and to one who likes it even a small thing will do. Devising a 

 system of topographic maps and mapping adapted to timber land 

 of moderate value served that way in those years for me. It was 

 great fun to think out and improve methods adapted to the special 

 conditions, the aim being to balance costliness of work with 

 efficiency of the result. The work itself was monotonous enough, 

 on the other hand, for I did it mostly myself and did not turn 



