70 NOTES ON FORES TJ? Y. 



the utmost that could be accomplished under one 

 European officer, devoting his whole time to it a 

 rate at which some of our Divisions would take 

 ten years to complete. We can hardly wait for 

 systematic working-plans until one party shall 

 have valued all our forests, and it would add very 

 much to costs to form such a party in every 

 province ; but sufficiently accurate data for a basis 

 of working-plans may be obtained in a simpler 

 manner by every executive officer, in addition to 

 his ordinary avocations, provided only that all the 

 larger forest blocks have been surveyed, and a map 

 to scale made of them ; and this survey work will 

 always be done better by men who have made 

 surveying their specialty than by forest officers, 

 especially in the Hills. 



As a basis for this readier-found data, it may 

 be observed, that when the forest consists of one 

 class of tree only, or of trees similar in their 

 habits of growth, the diameters of the stems 

 (barring accidents from snowdrift or windfall, 

 and irregularities caused by the woodman's axe) 

 will bear a tolerably uniform ratio to the inter- 

 spaces, and that at all ages of growth. 



With a pair of callipers, a tape measure, and a 

 notebook, two men could walk through a forest of 

 eight or ten square miles in a day, taking the 

 diameter of every tree en route, and measuring the 



