THE FOREST AS A RESOURCE. 41 



significance beyond all others. The amount of vir- 

 gin coniferous material standing ready for the axe 

 amounts, probably, to less than 1,500,000,000,000 

 feet. 



This lumber consumption, to be sure, represents 

 only one-quarter of our wood consumption ; but it 

 is the important part, to supply which trees of large 

 size, of good form, of special quality, must be on 

 hand, and which it has taken a century or more to 

 produce, — most of our lumber is furnished at pres- 

 ent by trees over 200 years old. The other three- 

 quarters of our consumption, for firewood and small 

 dimensions, can be easily supplied from inferior 

 material, the offal of the lumber trees and young 

 growth, although at present much body wood is 

 still cut into billets for firewood. 



The layman, who has no experience with the 

 requirements and practice of lumber production, 

 can hardly realize what a small percentage of the 

 actual wood in a tree or an acre of forest growth 

 reappears in useful shape from the sawmill. Not 

 only is a large part of the tree in the virgin woods 

 often altogether unfit for sawing, being crooked or 

 knotty or rotten or windshaken, but the unavoidable 

 waste at the mill in shaping the material reduces 

 the output by at least one-third to two-thirds 

 of the contents of the logs that are placed before 

 the saw. That this mill waste increases rapidly 

 with the reduction in size of the log will become a 

 significant fact, when the heavy sizes of the virgin 



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