REPORT ON THE TIMBERS OF GRAYSON, BRECK- 
INRIDGE, OHIO, AND HANCOCK COUNTIES. 
In the following report it will be noticed that I have con- 
fined my attention mostly to the trees, descending occasionally 
to the shrubs. The reason is obvious. In a report, whose 
object is mainly to give what is of economic value to the State, 
the timbers must occupy the chief place. While it would have 
been a pleasure to me to embrace in my study endogenous 
botany, especially the cryptogamia, every moment devoted to 
them would have been that much taken from the too short 
time that I had to devote to the timbers themselves. 
The method of study pursued has been as follows: start- 
ing out from Leitchfield I followed the Leitchfield and Clover- 
port road northwest to the Ohio river, at Cloverport; thence 
down the Ohio to Hawesville; then southwest, across Han- 
cock county, and back southeast, across Ohio county, to the 
Paducah Railroad, at Rosine Station. In this way I obtained 
two sections of timber, from Leitchfield north to the Ohio 
river, far enough apart to give any marked changes in the 
timber. Along the road, in both cases, | selected stations 
varying from four to eight miles apart, according to the 
local changes in timbers, and took a plot of representative 
ground, usually 50 or 100 yards square, on which I took the 
number of trees of different kinds. I carefully separated the 
old timber from the younger growth in all cases, in order 
to see how the future forest of Kentucky would compare 
with the present one in the relative per cents. of different 
kinds of timber. I also noted the position of the plot chosen 
for such enumeration—whether level, hillside, or hilltop; 
whether the exposure, if on a hillside, was north or south; 
the geological formation, the relative size, height, etc., of the 
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