30 BULLETIN 152, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



A great deal of the remaining old-growth hemlock timber occupies 

 fertile soil, suitable either for agriculture or for raising timber crops 

 of rapid-growing species. The expense of selection cuttings to favor 

 hemlock on lands of this quality is not warranted. Clear cutting, 

 therefore, is the best in such cases. Attempts to secure hemlock 

 reproduction in the ensuing second growth, however, are obviously 

 out of place. Unless the land is claimed for cultivation, some of 

 the more rapid growing species which appear in the second growth 

 are usually of more promise as the principal crop. 



The management of hemlock on level lands thus becomes a prob- 

 lem of the best use of the existing timber, with no special effort to 

 secure hemlock reproduction. What constitutes best use is deter- 

 mined by market and labor conditions in any given region. The util- 

 ization of all species constantly becomes more intensive, and the pre- 

 mium once placed on waste both in the woods and at the mill is growing 

 less as new uses are introduced and the value of wood increases. 

 Paper-pulp and fiber-board manufacture has presented good opportu- 

 nities for profitably disposing of waste. In some regions hemlock is 

 going into pulp instead of lumber. It is in connection with pulpwood 

 logging that tanbark gathering can be done most economically, since 

 peeled logs are more suitable for pulp and less suitable for lumber 

 than unpeeled. The use of hemlock for pulp has the further ad- 

 vantage that it includes crooked and small logs of little or no value for 

 lumber and of knotty tops and broken and defective logs that would 

 otherwise be left in the woods to rot. Quantities of hemlock slabs 

 are now sold to pulp mills by sawmills; but much low-grade hemlock 

 lumber is still produced, the value of which is often less than that of 

 an equal wood volume made into pulp. Among the economies of 

 the future one of the most important will be a closer discrimination 

 between logs and portions of logs which will make high-grade lum- 

 ber and those which will pay better for pulp. 



