METHOD or SURVEY. 



In Worcester County each town was covered by one man, 

 who did all the field work. In Plymouth County the men 

 worked in a crew, each man covering a certain assigned section 

 of the town which was being mapped. When one town was 

 finished the men moved on to the next. There were several 

 distinct advantages in this arrangement. Since the men camped 

 in tents it was possible for them to choose a central location for 

 their camp site and thus save time, inasmuch as in going to and 

 from their work they were not obliged to cover the same ground 

 as they would have been had they stopped at a farmhouse or 

 hotel in one corner of the town, as was often the case in 

 Worcester County. The cost of the survey was also lighter, the 

 only expense incurred being for foodstuffs, since the men and 

 camp equipment were moved from place to place by one of the 

 department trucks. 



For the main part, however, the methods followed in making 

 this survey were similar to those followed in Worcester County. 

 The men worked by compass and pace, using a copy of the 

 United States topographical map as a guide map for each 

 town. Each man would start at some convenient point on a 

 road or edge of a pond and run a straight line through to the 

 town line and then back to the opposite town line on a course 

 parallel to the first, but one-half mile distant. Care was taken 

 when laying off these parallel lines to have them cut the roads 

 so far as possible; that is, if the majority of the roads in a cer- 

 tain town ran in an easterly and westerly direction the strips 

 were run in a northerly and southerly direction, or vice versa. 

 Cutting the roads in this manner enabled the men to get a 

 truer idea of the actual forest conditions, and it was possible to 

 obtain a more accurate average, because if the strips were run 

 in the general direction of the roads some of them would paral- 

 lel the roads, and since in most cases the type found along the 

 roadsides, which is largely tillage, is not typical of the land 

 lying a few hundred feet farther in, the data obtained in this 

 way would not be trustworthy, as the lines would show an 

 amount of farm and tillage land out of proportion to actual 

 conditions. 



