CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 43 



over a million acres, nearly half of which have been burned over in recent years. 

 The timber remaining consists of aspen, "balm" or balsam poplar, white and 

 black spruce, Jack pine, some larch or "tamarac," patches of scrub oak, and, along 

 the streams, some green ash, "Manitoba maple" or box elder, elm, etc. In another 

 year it is expected that the survey of this reserve will be completed, that all squatters 

 will have been peacably removed, that an efficient system of fire ranging will be 

 in force and that at least part of the reserve will be put under management designed 

 to make it a constant producer of wood crops. 



HOW MEASUREMENTS ARE OBTAINED. 



In running out the strips a magnetic compass is used to keep them parallel, 

 and the distances are measured either by pacing or by dragging a light "chain" 

 four rods, or sixty-six feet, in length. The ordinary "link" chain used by land 

 surveyors is seldom used for this work because it is constantly getting tangled up 

 in the undergrowth and fallen branches, and thus delays the progress of the party. 

 A light, well tempered steel tape slips easily along the ground and is therefore very 

 much preferable. The great advantage of chaining over pacing is that we do 

 away with the necessity of counting paces and get a much more exact measurement 

 of distances. Each party usually consists of four men, viz.: A compassman, 

 who keeps the direction, drags the tape and keeps the sylvicultural notes; two 

 calipermen one on each side to measure the diameters of all trees within two 

 rods of the tape; and a tallyman to record diameters, to keep a record of distances 

 chained, and to note changes in elevation and other data required to sketch in the 

 topography of the country traversed. Thecaliper men measure the diameters of the 

 trees at "breast height," or four and a half feet above the ground. The reasons for 

 this are; (1), It is a convenient height at which a measurement can be rapidly 

 made; (2), It avoids the "flare" or "root swelling" found in most merchantable 

 timber; (3), The volume of the tree is a function of the diameter at this height. In 

 large timber the diameters are returned in two inch classes, but in small timber by 

 inch classes. 



Care must be taken to see that the calipermen men do not measure dead 

 or defective trees, that they don't get too far from the "chain" or 

 make the strip too narrow, that diameters are measured at right angles to 

 the stems of the trees and that they keep the calipers up to "breast height." 

 Towards the end of the day they are apt to drop them and thus raise the estimate 

 for the volume of the stand. When there is a dense stand of small timber or it is 

 difficult to get through the undergrowth, it is advisable to make the strips only 

 two rods wide, thus giving each caliperman a strip of timber only a rod wide to look 

 after. If the strips are four rods, or a chain, wide, the party only needs to go ten 

 chains to complete a strip whose area is one acre, but if the strips are only two 

 rods wide, they must go twenty chains. The compassman keeps count of the 

 number of chains, and at the end of every tenth or twentieth chain, depending 

 upon the width of the strips, calls out " Acre." Whenever theforest type changes, 

 the sylvicultural notes are written up on the back of the sheet and a new one is 

 taken. The tally on the face of each sheet shows what distance the party has 

 gone, and consequently, the number of acres and fractions of an acre measured 

 before the type changed. In open stands of timber, such as longleaf pine, where 

 the going is easy, a party, of four men do as much as 60 acres in a day, but if they 

 have to fight their way through a dense undergrowth, they may not be able to do 

 more than fourteen or fifteen acres. If a fifth man can be secured to direct the 



