PREFACE 



DEAR READERS: 



In the following pages an attempt is made to treat "Forest Men- 

 suration" from a scientific-mathematical standpoint as well as from 

 the view point of practical application. 



Naturally, pamphlets of as restricted a character as this treatise on 

 forest mensuration address themselves to a very restricted circle of 

 readers; and the expense of printing is never covered by the returns from 

 sales. 



Thus it becomes necessary, in order to reduce the expense of pub- 

 lication, to omit all, or practically all, lengthy explanation of a mathe- 

 matical nature which the teacher at a forest school can easily supply 

 in the course of his lectures. 



The present Biltmore pamphlet on Forest Mensuration is intended, 

 above all, to assist the students enlisted at the Biltmore School. It con- 

 tains the teacher's dictation which the students, in former years, were 

 compelled to take down in long or shorthand, to the annoyance of both 

 teacher and students. 



It cannot be expected that a present-day lumberman will take a direct 

 and personal interest in any of the following paragraphs. Still, in con- 

 servative forestry, in destructive forestry, and in any other business en- 

 terprise, the truism is worth remembering that "knowledge is the best 

 of assets." 



Knowledge certainly forms the only unalienable factor of production. 



With the advent of high stumpage prices, the owner of woodland will 

 be inclined to consider, under many circumstances, the advisability of 

 forest-husbandry an idea which was as preposterous in past decades of 

 superabundance of timber as the raising of beef cattle, some sixty years 

 ago, in the prairies then abounding in buffalo. 



Financially considered, a proper outcome of forest-husbandry is and 

 must be based on a proper application of the theories and principles 

 involved in forest mensuration. 



I shall be deeply grateful to a kind reader who, discovering mistakes 

 or incongruities in the following paragraphs, will take the trouble of 

 sending me a timely hint. Most truly, 



C. A. SCHENCK, 



Director Biltmore Forest School, and 



. Forester to the Biltmore Estate. 

 August i, 1905. 



