8o 



THE FORESTER. 



April, 



tainly opposed to American customs, which 

 allow every citizen to manage his private 

 property as he sees fit. 



Section i in the bill limits the cutting of 

 spruce, pine, fir or hemlock to a diameter 

 of ten inches two feet above the ground. 

 Section 2 makes it unlawful for any rail- 

 road or other transportation company to 

 have in its possession for the purpose of 

 transportation, except it shall receive the 

 same from some point outside the State, 

 any spruce, pine, fir or hemlock timber 

 in the log, the diameter of which at the 

 large end shall measure less than ten in- 

 ches. 



If it were possible to enforce this law it 

 would mean that every tree must be cut 

 and transported in its full length. For if 

 the tree were cut up into short lengths 

 many of the logs, especially top logs, 

 would measure less than ten inches at the 

 large end, although they might have been 

 cut from trees twelve, fourteen or sixteen 

 inches in diameter two feet above the 

 ground. It would be both absurd and im- 

 possible to attempt to enforce Section 2. 

 Then, too, anyone familiar with the tim- 

 ber lands and lumbering operations of 

 New Hampshire should know that it is 

 both undesirable and impossible to adopt 

 the same diameter limit for all sections of 

 the State. No lumberman or trained for- 

 ester would cut the timber on high slopes 

 in the same way that he would the timber 

 lying in the valleys. 



In the valleys and on the lower slopes, 

 where, as a rule, a considerable amount of 

 hardwood is found in mixture with the 

 spruce, it would be a short-sighted policy 

 to remove all the spruce and allow the 

 hardwoods to take complete possession of 

 the soil. Here every forester and most 

 of the up-to-date lumbermen in New 

 Hampshire would strictly limit the diam- 

 eter to which the spruce should be cut. 

 Hut on the higher slopes, where the 

 growth is very often pure spruce, limiting 

 tin- diameter and so thinning out the tim- 

 ber, would almost surely result in the 

 trees which were left being blown down. 

 In such localities every tree of any value 

 must be removed at the first cutting, and 

 in a short time the soil will be covered 



with a growth of either spruce, poplar, 

 white birch, maple, or bird cherry. 



It is a great pity that the well-meaning 

 friends of forestry are so often unpractical, 

 and hence antagonize the lumbermen who 

 are trying to handle their property to the 

 best advantage. But it is extremely for- 

 tunate for New Hampshire that such a 

 considerable part of the timberlands are 

 owned by large companies who know the 

 value of the timber, especially the spruce, 

 and would never think of clean-cutting it. 



The small owner cannot afford to hold 

 his timber and pay the taxes upon it, and 

 so is forced to clean cut. Then, too, the 

 large companies, especially the much- 

 abused pulp-mills, own very valuable 

 water powers and are vitally interested in 

 seeing to it that the cutting of timber is so 

 managed that the water supply shall not 

 be affected. 



This much-discussed point of the effect 

 of timber on water supply is very gener- 

 ally misunderstood. The volume of water 

 which passed down the Androscoggin 

 River during 1900 may have been as great 

 as it was one hundred years ago, in 1800, 

 but in 1900 a very large percentage of the 

 total volume passed down the river during 

 the early spring months, while in 1800 it 

 was more evenly distributed throughout 

 the year. 



This comes from the fact that the lands 

 bordering the Androscoggin and its tribu- 

 taries have been clean cut and in the early 

 spring the deep snows lie exposed to the 

 full force of the sun and melt very rapidly, 

 causing extremely high water for a short 

 time. The dense virgin forests far back 

 from the river are holding the snow and 

 storing up water for the summer months, 

 but this area has been tremendously re- 

 duced since 1800. 



In the dry summer months the water in 

 the river is so low that the mills are often 

 obliged to buy water from the Power Com- 

 pany at Rangeley Lakes, and so they are 

 coming to see that they must carefully 

 restrict the cutting of timber along their 

 streams. Water power is horse power 

 and no sensible man wants to see it going 

 over his mill-dam in May when he must 

 buy it in July. 



