360 B. E. FERNOW 



billion cubic feet of log timber which are to furnish our forty 

 billion feet of lumber, timber, and bolts, we cull over probably 

 not less than ten to twelve million acres, taking out the best 

 kinds and best trees and leaving the ground to the undesirable 

 kinds and trees, preventing a satisfactory young growth to 

 take the place of what we have removed. And if perchance 

 a young growth starts, a natural phenomenon — natural only, 

 or mainly, to the United States — the ever recurring forest 

 fires, will sweep it off. It is now even admitted by lumber- 

 men, those who have a fuller acquaintance with the country, 

 that our " inexhaustible " forest wealth is sufficiently reduced 

 to call for restorative measures, such as the art of forestry 

 teaches. The state of New York has perhaps taken the most 

 advanced step in that direction by not only buying up the 

 culled forest lands in the Adirondack mountains but by estab- 

 lishing a state college of forestry in connection with Cornell 

 university, where the art of forestry is to be taught as a pro- 

 fession and the foresters to handle and recuperate the state 

 property are to be educated. 



The geography of our lumber supplies is such that we 

 can recognize lumbering regions, each of which furnishes the 

 bulk of one or more staples to the lumber market. Thus 

 Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota monopolize the white 

 pine market; the Southern Atlantic and Gulf states contain 

 the bulk of our hard pines, while the hard woods are mainly 

 furnished by the central states, with Tennessee the greatest 

 producer. The state of Maine, the Pine tree state, has long 

 ceased to supply much of the white pine, from which it derived 

 its name. Spruce for pulp is now its principal lumber product, 

 although the birch and maple in which it abounds but which 

 are hardly yet cut to any large extent will some day become 

 more valuable. Spruce also is the main lumber tree of New 

 Hampshire, while the rest of the New England states are cut 

 out of all valuable coniferous material and also largely of 

 their hardwoods, the majority of the woodlands being coppice 

 growth, fit for firewood and small dimension material only. 

 The state of New York, which of all the states in 1850 fur- 

 nished still the largest amount of lumber, especially white 

 pine, now only has spruce and hemlock left to furnish staple 



