458 APPENDIX. 



Average Price per ioo Cubic Feet of Wood Realized 

 BY THE Prussian Government for its Entire Crop 

 (ABOUT 300,000,000 Cubic Feet) — Continued. 



1865 $471 



1870 4-35 



1875 5-21 



1880 4-47 



1885 4-30 



1890 440 



The highest price for any district was obtained in 1888, 

 being $8.49, while the lowest was $2.82. The lower prices 

 in later years are explained by the increased importations of 

 wood, especially from Hungary, Russia, and Sweden. 



The influence which development of means of transporta- 

 tion exercises on wood prices is interestingly exhibited in a 

 comparison of the price prevailing in the district with lowest 

 and the district with highest price, in Prussia. This relation 

 changed during the last thirty years as follows, taking 100 for 

 the lowest price: i860, 100:600; 1870, 100:380; 1880, 

 100 : 300 ; 1890, 100 : 220. In other words, the range of price 

 decreased in the thirty years of railroad building to one-fourth 

 of the original one. 



In 1892 the difference in prices was 100:221, when timber 

 wood stood 100:267, firewood 100:177, while rye, the 

 most general agricultural crop, showed the relation of 100: 

 116 in the lowest and highest market (a range of only 

 16 per cent) ; the bulkiness of the wood material circum- 

 scribing its transportableness probably accounts for this great 

 difference. 



To compare prices of wood in America no better means are 

 at hand than the record of export prices on square timber 

 from Canada, which brings the variable item of cost of produc- 

 tion to a minimum, as given in a table in '' Forest Wealth of 

 Canada." 



