FLOATING. 407 



logs can be floated before the succeeding year. In such a 

 case it is better to begin from the lower end of the channel. 



During the after-floating, but chiefly when a certain amount 

 of progress has been made in floating off the tail of the sweeps, 

 the sunken wood should be fished up, most of it being at the 

 lower end of the channel. 



The quantity of sunken wood depends on the amount of 

 drying to which the wood has been subjected before being 

 launched, the condition of the floating-channel, but above all, 

 the nature of the banks, the fall and buoyancy of the water, 

 the length of the channel, and the species, nature, and size of 

 the floating pieces. Round pieces sink more readily than split 

 pieces, and branches of spruce and silver-fir being much heavier 

 than their stems yield a greater percentage of sunken wood. 



The workmen use the hooked pole to spike the logs or billets 

 ;iiid draw them to the bank. Fine w r eather is required for this 

 work, and clear water, so that the bottom of the stream and all 

 sunken wood may be seen. The wood is collected daily and 

 piled in loose stacks on the bank of the stream, and when dry, 

 it is either transported by land, or sold. 



As soon as the annual floating is over and the sunken wood 

 collected, a report is drawn up by the same commission which 

 acted before the floating. In this report all legal damages are 

 entered which neighbouring properties may have suffered from 

 the floating operations, all legal compensation being paid. 

 This opportunity also is taken to prepare a list of any damage 

 which may have been done to the floating-channel or the works 

 attached to it, so that they may be repaired in the ensuing 



summer. 



SECTION II. KAFTING.* 



Hafting is distinguished from floating by the fact that the 

 wood is no longer in single pieces, but is bound together into 

 rafts. A quantity of wood firmly bound together is termed a 

 raft-section, and a number of sections form a raft. 



* Although rafting is done rarely by the forester, yet the rafts are made-up 

 with withes and cross-pieces that he has to deliver. In certain districts, logs 

 are measured only when they are bound into rafts, and frequently a floating 

 channel is also a rafting-channel, and has to be prepared with that object in 

 view. Forty per cent, of the 14,000 kilometers (8,750 miles) of German rivers 

 are used for rafting. 



