No. 4.] REPORT OF STATE FORESTER. 309 



miscellaneous growths, not of great importance in the aggregate, 

 but prominent in the towns in which they are situated. 



Scrub means land covered with acorn brush, or a land cov- 

 ered with young growth of no commercial value. 



Pitch pine, in Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket counties, is 

 put in the pine type. 



The cedar referred to is the white cedar (Chamcecyparis 

 thyoides) of the swamps, and not the red cedar. 



In drawing conclusions from these figures, it is to be noted that 

 the larger the area used the more accurate will the results be; 

 that is, the figures for a county are more accurate than those for a 

 town, and those for the State more accurate than the figures for 

 any county. The columns of per cent which give the amount of 

 forest land relative to the total area, or the amount of land in 

 each type relative to the total forest area, offer a better means of 

 comparing different towns or counties than the figures of acre- 

 age. 



Thirty-seven per cent of the acreage of the State is in forest 

 land; but if Suffolk and Nantucket counties are omitted, the per- 

 centage is raised to forty. We add to this an amount sufficient to 

 make up for waste land that should be in forest, and we have 

 about fifty per cent of the total area of the State available for 

 forest purposes. 



