1899. 



AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



7i 



once, to release young growth crushed by 

 their fall, unless a reason satisfactory to the 

 forester can be given for some other course. 



"8. Any young growth bent over by felled 

 trees must be released and allowed to straighten 

 without delay. 



"9 Provision for carrying out these regula- 

 tions should be made in all contracts with 

 lumbermen, and fines should be imposed by 

 the contracts for failure to comply with them." 



The author adds: "The application of such 

 general rules to specific cases is the province 

 of the forester." 



This working plan, which, as has been said, 

 was drawn up to meet the conditions of 

 Adirondack forest management, and more 

 especially the conditions in Ne-Ha-Sa Ne 

 Park, has been in operation for nearly a year, 

 over the property of Mr. Webb and that of 

 Mr. Wm. C. Whitney, an area of 106,000 acres. 

 Mr. Patrick Moynehan, a very successful 

 lumberman of well-known practical ability, 

 has done the cutting under the working plan 

 and is thoroughly convinced that it is a good 

 thing. It is gratifying to know that other 

 owners of Adirondack lands have expressed 

 their intention to have similar plans prepared 

 for their forests also by the Division of Forestry. 

 Thus the book has done what it was intended 

 to do. 



It is a significant fact that many of the data 

 put to use were collected on the property of 

 the Santa Clara Lumber Company, near Santa 

 Clara, Franklin County, N. Y. This, together 

 with the approbation of the practical lumber- 

 men who are doing the work it recommends 

 and the spirit and scope of the book itself, 

 renders it specially valuable as a sign of the 

 growing friendliness between lumberman and 

 forester, who at the last are dependent on each 

 other. 



A review of The Adirondack Spruce, how- 

 ever slight and cursory, must at least mention 

 the illustrations with which the teachings of 

 the text are so tellingly brought home. These 

 add, besides, an air of completeness and verity. 



Measuring the Forest Crop, by A. K. 

 Mlodziansky. (Bulletin No. 20 of the Division 

 of Forestry, prepared under the direction of 

 B. E. Fernow.) A salient fact of this publi- 

 cation is that almost throughout it employs the 

 cubic foot, a unit of measurement practically 

 unused in this country. The board foot, the 

 unit in general use in all parts of the United 

 States, is mentioned in two connections, once 

 on the first page, where it receives scant but 

 contemptuous mention, and again in the dis- 

 cussion of the determination of the volume by 

 sample trees and sample areas. The method 

 of treatment adopted is perhaps more largely 

 responsible for this result than any deliberate 

 disregard of the American lumber unit, but the 

 effect is the same. 



It might be said in justification of this course 



that the board foot is in itself misleading and 

 uncertain as a standard, and that in conse- 

 quence it is not important that it should receive 

 any but the most casual reference. This re- 

 ply would overlook the fundamental fact that 

 the board foot is a vastly more practical unit 

 than the cubic foot, for the reason that it tells 

 a man not what absolute quantity of wood 

 there is in his log, without reference to waste 

 in manufacture, as the cubic foot does, but 

 how much usable wood his log contains, with 

 all due allowance made for necessary loss be- 

 fore the log can be converted into merchant- 

 able lumber. This, and not the absolute cubic 

 contents, is the fact of importance. It is 

 quite true that the variety of log-scales in use 

 in different parts of this country tends to con- 

 fusion, and that in other ways there is room for 

 improvement, but when all is said the fact re- 

 mains that the board foot is an immensely more 

 practical and usable measure than the cubic 

 foot. The different conditions of the lumber 

 trade in the various parts of the United States, 

 which determine in one place that a log is 

 merchantable when it will square four inches, 

 and in another not till it will square twelve, 

 demand a unit which will exprc s the mer- 

 chantable value, not the utterly irrelevant solid 

 contents of a tree or a forest. Even if that 

 were not true it would be unwise in a publi- 

 cation of this kind to ignore the unit in gen- 

 eral use in the country for which the book was 

 written. To do so is to create a needless prej- 

 udice against the book and the Division from 

 which it emanates It is but fair to the latter to 

 add that its course during the last few months 

 indicates unmistakably that no such lack of 

 practical application will be found in any of its 

 future bulletins. 



Considered strictly as a summary of European 

 methods there is much to be said in praise of 

 Bulletin No. 20. It covers fairly the best of 

 them, and in some respects it is the most 

 usable treatise of the kind in the English 

 language. On the other hand the rigid man- 

 ner of presenting these methods robs them of a 

 large part of whatever elasticity they have in 

 their original forms, and the direction for work 

 in the field at times suggest that the author is 

 quietly amusing himself at the expense of 

 his reader, as when on page 26 he advises 

 him to have his sample tree sawed up 

 to ascertain its contents in lumber. Such a 

 procedure would seem superfluous to the prac- 

 tical American mind when the same result can 

 be reached with all the accuracy the method 

 permits by simply consulting a little book 

 which may be carried in the vest pocket. 



Water Supply and Irrigation Papers, No*. 

 17 and 18, published by the U. S. Geological 

 Survey, have been received. They are both 

 written by Carl Ewald Grunsky, who treats, in 

 the first, of Irrigation near Bakersfield, Cal. , 

 and in the second, of Irrigation near Fresno, in 



