$ REPORT ON THE TIMBERS 
-grow in this region, I was invariably informed that there once 
was a great deal of poplar in these localities, but that it had 
-all been cut out. The same is true, to an alarming extent, 
throughout the whole Tradewater country. High up on the 
Tradewater river, and on small and inconvenient tributaries, 
considerable quantities of liriodendron are to be found; but I 
know of no convenient locality in which any considerable body 
of really valuable yellow poplar timber now exists. It is per- 
fectly safe to say that fifty per cent. of all the available timber 
of this kind has been cut out. : 
The sweet gum seems to be plenty, and the white elm more 
or less so; but it was impossible to form any idea of the future 
forests of these timbers. The drain upon them now, though 
considerable, is largely local. The biack-walnut is now mostly 
second growth, and seems to be small, rough, and limby. The 
reason is, I think, that it grows up only in open places, where 
it does not have to compete with other timbers. It is there- 
fore confined to fence-rows and road-sides, where the ground 
is hard-trodden, or else to waste places where the soil is ex- 
ceedingly poor. This gives it the character of a dwarf or 
scrub timber, which the old forest growth did not have. 
DRAINS ON TIMBERS. 
The principal drain upon timbers of the Tradewater region 
at present, outside of the local saw-mills to be found along all 
the streams where good timbers abound, is made by the spoke 
factory of Booth, Dulaney & Co., at Kuttawa, Lyon county. 
It is called a spoke factory, though in reality the firm manu- 
facture, in addition to wagon and buggy spokes, hubs, felloes, 
axles, etc., nearly all modern implements used about the farm, 
such as axe-handles, broom-handles, ox-yokes, ox-bows, ete. 
A large part of the rived spoke timber (white-oak) used by 
the factory is obtained from the Tradewater region. I was 
informed by a gentleman who has had many years of expe- 
rience in that branch of business, that the best and most 
durable white oak timber in the United States comes from 
“the Tradewater and its tributaries. 
IIo 
