618 INDUSTKIAL USES OF WOOD. 



left unsold on the filling-areas ; finally, in still other districts 

 the collector of dead wood is permitted to cut down and 

 appropriate dead standing saplings and poles. [It is abso- 

 lutely necessary that for all forest-ranges a local definition 

 of the meaning of dead firewood should be made and enforced 

 strictly. Tr.] 



The collection of dead firewood is very simple : the wood is 

 picked up from the ground and wherever the dry branches of 

 standing trees are included, they are pulled down by iron 

 hooks at the end of long poles, or men climb the trees and cut 

 off the dead wood with an axe. The method of collection is 

 not an indifferent matter to the forester. So long as dead 

 wood lying on the ground only is collected, its removal is not 

 injurious, but its harmless character is gone when hooks are 

 used. Important as it is that trees should lose their dead 

 branches in order to improve the value of their wood, it is, 

 however, most hurtful to remove these branches in an injurious 

 manner. It has been stated already (p. 135), that at the 

 circular occlusion around the base of a dead branch a small 

 depression exists, in which water accumulates and moisture per- 

 sists for some time, so that at this place the branch rots quickly 

 and eventually breaks off by its own weight, which has the 

 greater effect the longer is the leverage of the branch. If such 

 a stage of decomposition has not been reached, as in the case 

 of all branches that have died only recently, the breakage of 

 the branch by the hook leaves a little stump, which only in 

 the course of years becomes occluded in the stem. The hook 

 should therefore be excluded from all woods that are not yet 

 mature ; it is certainly more injurious than the axe by which 

 occasionally a suppressed but still green sapling may be 

 cut. It would therefore be much better for the forest if the 

 hook were replaced by the pruning tree-saw. 



The yield of dead wood varies in quantity according to the 

 definition of dead firewood. Whenever only refuse wood and 

 dead stems are taken, it amounts to 12 to 15 per cent, of the 

 volume of a crop. When the trees stand close together, it is 

 greater than when they are far apart, is greater on good than 

 on bad soil, it is greatest of all in pole-woods, when weaker 

 poles are being suppressed. 



