216 North American Forests and Forestry 



official inquirers. There are numerous reasons 

 why it is not for the interest of owners to let others 

 know too definitely the quantity of timber growing 

 on their land. The fear of the tax collector is but 

 one of these reasons; that of the business com- 

 petitor is equally strong. The upshot of it all is, 

 that woodsmen of equal skill and experience, and 

 equal degrees of acquaintance with the particular 

 locality, will differ widely in their estimates of the 

 available timber resources. Even aside from in- 

 tentional or unintentional bias, the methods of 

 making estimates of standing timber are so crude 

 and rough that nothing but a faint approximation 

 of the real facts is ever obtained by them. Un- 

 doubtedly these results are sufficiently accurate for 

 the business of lumbering as now conducted. But 

 when lumbering shall be based in this country on a 

 system of silviculture, the present methods of meas- 

 uring and valuing wood crops will have to be re- 

 placed by others that give more accurate data. 



The art of measuring wood crops, either felled 

 or standing, has been highly developed in Europe. 

 Foresters of a mathematical turn of mind have 

 delighted in inventing various methods of men- 

 suration, and reduced even the simplest things to 

 mathematical formulas which make the handbooks 

 of this art exceedingly hard reading to those not 

 fond of dealing with equations. Various imple- 

 ments have been devised to assist in obtaining the 

 data required for computation. The aim with 

 Europeans invariably is to discover the volume of 



