THE TREE AND ITS FORMS. 13 



especially great where spoke billets are rived out in the woods and 

 only white billets are taken, because the red billets bring little more 

 than half as much as the white. Another source of waste comes 

 from the discrimination against the wood from the upper cuts of 

 the tree in favor of that from the lower cuts. This is due not alone 

 to the knottier character of the upper logs, but also to the prevalent 

 opinion that the wood is considerably inferior to that from the 

 lower cuts. The practice of cutting high stumps prevalent in the 

 South is also very wasteful. It is claimed that the difficulty of 

 sawing out with the grain makes it unprofitable to cut below the 

 flare of the butt; therefore small trees are generally cut more than 

 a foot above the ground and large trees more than 2 feet. Some 

 firms, however, cut low stumps and consider that the greater width 

 of the sap and the greater toughness of the wood in the butt is a 

 sufficient offset to the difficulty of sawing. If the average stump 

 height at least 2 feet were reduced only 8 inches, as would easily 

 be possible, there would be saved as much as 10,000,000 board feet 

 annually on the total cut. 



A somewhat unavoidable waste arises from the taking out of 

 special products. The pole and shaft or the sucker-rod makers 

 leave a lot of stuff in the woods which would make good handles or 

 spokes, while the spoke or handle makers use up a great deal of 

 material which should really be put into poles, shafts, rims, or sucker 

 rods. Even where economy is attempted and spoke billets or 

 handle blanks are cut in connection with poles, shafts, or rims, it 

 is often difficult to dispose of the by-product, and it often happens 

 that for lack of a market thousands of feet of hickory are destroyed 

 by insects. 



Much of the waste at the mill is due to the discrimination against 

 the heart wood and birdpecked material. Another source is the 

 practice of cutting spoke billets and rim and pole and shaft strips 

 unnecessarily long. This is especially true of spoke billets, which 

 are cut into a uniform length of 30 inches, whereas the spoke lengths 

 range from 18 to 24 inches. 



In addition to the waste of merchantable material, in lumbering 

 much promising young growth is used for skids, is swamped out, and 

 is broken by falling trees. This loss is hard to estimate, but it is 

 very great, and will seriously affect the future supply. 



THE TREE AND ITS FORMS. 



The hickories belong to the same family as the walunts. Botan- 

 ically they represent a very old form and rank among the earlier 

 hard woods. The genus is now peculiar to North America and is 

 confined almost entirely to the eastern part of the United States, 

 though some species grow in Canada, and in Mexico it is represented 



