PAPERS 0.\ BIOLOGY AND AGRICULTURE 103 



find piles of sawdust and mill refuse indicating the former 

 sites of portable mills, the timber having been "sawed out" 

 and the mill moved to some other place. Again, you will see 

 smoke drifting up from one of these same hollows, or at the 

 mouth of it, which proves to be from one of these portable 

 outfits. Many of these mills have been engaged in sawing 

 beech ties or beech car stock, but in many localities the sup- 

 ply of beech is getting pretty well exhausted. (Fig. 8.) The 

 crew consists usually of four men, an engineer and fireman ; 

 a setter, since the mill is usually "hand set" ; a sawyer, who 

 is often the proprietor himself; and an "off bearer," v/ho 

 takes away the boards and edgings. The mill has usually 

 cable or "rack and pinion feed" and a circular saw of from 

 48 to 54 inches in diameter. The output under the best con- 

 ditions would be about 4000-5000 board feet per day. Some- 

 times these men purchase small tracts of timber at so much 

 per thousand feet. Ties are sawed by the thousand feet and 

 it takes about 31 or 32 railroad ties to make a thousand 

 feet of lumber. The passing of the portable mill in such 

 regions is a bad thing for the woodlot owner because it gave 

 him a chance to have lumber sawed for farm buildings or 

 for the market. The fact that there are so few portable 

 outfits means that the timber is becoming exhausted and it 

 is only occasionally that good tracts come into the market 

 by the death of the older class of citizens who believed in 

 saving their timber. 



(2) Larger Mills. Some of these are found on the 

 Jonesboro quadrangle at Mill Creek, Ware and Vineland and 

 they usually have a more modern equipment and a perma- 

 nent location along a railroad. Some of them are equipped 

 with band saws and haul in logs with auto trucks from bot- 

 tomland tracts which have been purchased. Sometimes 

 they buy land and timber together and after cutting the 

 timber sell the land for farming purposes. Usually they 

 are located on a railroad and can fill special orders for ties 

 or car stock and with considerable land to draw from can 

 build up quite a little community in the small town where 

 they are located, giving work to many laborers and team- 

 sters. Very often veneer companies having a tract of con- 



