FOREST CONDITIONS. 363 



timber cruisings of railroad companies, the United 

 States Chief Geographer has for the states of 

 Washington and Oregon placed the merchantable 

 timber at less than 350,000 million feet on 

 38,000,000 acres, which appears to us a rather 

 low estimate even with the high standard at pres- 

 ent prevailing. Timber cruisings are usually from 

 20 to 50 per cent below the actualities. 



The writer still believes that it would be per- 

 fectly safe for purposes of this general discussion 

 to raise this estimate 20 per cent, and, applying the 

 same stumpage for California on a timber-produc- 

 ing area of 18,000,000 acres, to arrive at the above 

 figure, leaving 180,000 million feet of the amount 

 credited to the Western states on page 52 to be 

 found in the Rocky Mountains and scattered 

 regions of the West. 



Indeed, with a change in standards and in log- 

 ging practice, and especially with a more rational 

 utilization of all the useful timber, this estimate 

 may readily be doubled or even trebled, as the 

 writer had done in the Senate document cited, 

 when comparing supplies with the consumption of 

 the whole country. 



Since the cut of lumber in the Pacific coast 

 states does not exceed at present 5,000,000,000 

 feet, no immediate apprehension regarding supplies 

 would be justified. Yet, when we find that the 

 value of the mill-product of the three states in- 

 creased according to the census from S8,ooo,000 in 



