PREFACE. 



Nowhere on earth more than in the United States is the forest utilized by ingenious 

 devices and by intelligent men. 



In America, the knowledge of forest utilization has grown, within the last forty years, 

 on a scale as wonderful as have the sums of money annually spent on forest utilization. 



The amount of money thus spent, between tree and manufacturing consumer, is likely 

 to exceed the billion dollar mark. 



The manufacturing consumer of the United States is apt to put another five hundred 

 million dollars into the value of the raw product refined by him. 



Confronted by these figures, the layman is apt to ask: -"Are our forests utilized by 

 haphazard methods or are they utilized in a scientific way?" And further: -"Why is it 

 that the knowledge spent on forest utilization -on that grand American industry -does 

 not rank amongst the so-called applied sciences of the country?" 



The answer to these queries lies in two points. On the one hand, forest utilization 

 has grown, in actual practice, so phenomenally fast that no scientific lumberman in 

 this country could dare to keep up with the progress. On the other hand, the many 

 facts concerning forest utilization which are known to the American lumberman have 

 never been presented in a systematic form. A systematized knowledge of lumbering 

 would at once entitle it to the rank of a science. 



In the following pages, our present knowledge of forest utilization is presented, 

 for the first time, in a systematic form. 



C. A. SCHENCK. 



