EMORY OAK IN SOUTHERN ARIZONA. 



13 



who have used the three species and who readily identify them 

 favor Emory oak, probably because its wood is more sound and less 

 subject to heart rot than the other two species. 



CORD WOOD. 



Most of the cord wood is cut by Mexicans, who prefer the ax to 

 the saw, as most woodsmen do; in their case, however, part of the 

 preference for the ax is due to their inability to keep a saw in proper 

 shape to do good work. Before the establishment of the National 

 Forests in the region studied it was their custom to pollard large 

 trees, or those which they thought would be hard to split. Even 

 when trees were felled the stumps were likely to be 3 feet high. 

 They never made a clean cutting, and although their wastefulness 

 may be condemned as far as individual trees are concerned, the 

 resultant effect on the forest has been better than that which would 

 have followed indiscriminate clean cutting. 



The wood is supposed to be cut and stacked into cords; yet not a 

 single full cord was found in Nogales or at any of the mining camps. 

 Instead of 4-foot lengths, the sticks were not more than 3J feet long, 

 and, where the buyer was unsuspecting, not more than 3 feet. Every 

 effort is made to make the stack look large with the least possible 

 amount of wood. The branches are crooked, and the piles are as 

 loose as they can be made as the saying is, "so you could throw a 

 dog through them anywhere." Under these conditions the actual 

 solid content of wood is much short of what it should be and of 

 what it would be if the sticks were cut full length and were well 

 stacked. The usual short cord contains about 65 cubic feet, whereas 

 a full cord should contain about 72 cubic feet, or about 10 per cent 

 more. With the usual 3J-foot stick length, 65 cubic feet can be 

 used as a converting factor for cord wood volume tables. 



Table 4 gives the solid cubic contents of Emory oak trees in cubic 

 feet by diameter at breastheight : 



TABLE 4. Cubic contents of Emory oak, of various diameters, 1 



1 Includes trees over 3 inches in diameter and cordwood sticks down to 1 inches middle diameter. 



