FORESTRY AND FOREST MANAGEMENT 355 



hauled or skidded to the place from which it may be trans- 

 ported to the saw mill. Formerly, logs were floated down 

 streams to saw mills, but this has been found so wasteful that 

 now they are nearly all hauled by rail ; this is especially 

 true of the hardwoods, which soon become water-logged and 

 sink. In many of the Eastern and Northern forests the 

 methods are not greatly improved over those of fifty years 

 ago ; but in the Western forests, where logs of great size 

 must be handled, machinery is largely used in all lumbering 

 operations. 



The first saw mill in the New World was erected at Ber- 

 wick, Maine, in 1631. It was a very simple affair, compar- 

 able as to size with the small portable mills now in use that 

 are capable of cutting from 2000 to 4000 board feet a day. 

 Many of the larger modern saw mills can cut more than a half 

 million board feet in the same time, all the operations being 

 performed by intricate machinery. The log is carried into 

 one of these mills by an endless chain and is then placed on a 

 " carriage " which carries it past the saw so that pieces of 

 varying thickness may be cut off. The sawyer controls these 

 operations by means of levers and determines in a general 

 way what type of lumber shall be cut from each individual 

 log. All the earlier saw mills used /heavy circular saws, many 

 of which wasted almost a half inch each time a piece was cut 

 off; these are now almost entirely replaced by the " band 

 saw " in the shape of a continuous steel band which is more 

 economical with material and which will cut through much 

 larger logs. From this saw the main part of the log and the 

 pieces that have been cut from it go to other saws which cut 

 them into their final forms, such as heavy timbers, planks, or 

 boards ; the smaller pieces are cut into laths or shingles, or 

 are used in making matches and excelsior, or are distilled in 

 order to obtain various by-products. The lumber taken from 

 the mill is piled in open piles to allow it to dry ; after drying 

 it is taken to the planing mill where it is finished for market. 



