WHITE PINE. 1& 



yond tlie limits of the forest. Generally it seems quite inde- 

 pendent of the quality of the soil; it grew as fast, as steadily 

 and to as large proportions on the sandy and gravelly lands 

 along the Flambeau, Chippewa, and Wisconflin as on the heav- 

 ier soils of the divides and the famous Wolf river basin. 



The yields varied with the size and number of trees per acre. 

 It is naturally largest in mature stands of pure growth, such 

 as may be seen in parts of OAeida and Vilas counties, where 

 as much as 2 million feet are cut from 40 acres and where 

 single acres might be selected cutting 100 M. feet B. M. The 

 yield is smaller in very old timber, even in the pinery, where 

 the stand is broken, and still more so in the old and scattered 

 timber of the mixed forest where often but one or two trees 

 were found to the acre. A cut of one million feet per 40 acres, 

 or 25 M. feet per acre was and is considered a very good yield 

 and generally the cut is less than half this amount. Since in all 

 these wild woods the ground is irregularly covered and almost 

 every 40-acre tract has its bare places without merchantable 

 timber, all figures of yield per unit are somewhat misleading. 

 Entire townships (23,000 acres) are known to have cut over 400 

 million feet per town while 200 million per town have been ac- 

 counted for in the output of the several mills for the entire 

 area of Wood county, and a cut of about 125 millions per town 

 is recorded for the Wolf river above Shawano. For comparison 

 with present supplies an attempt is made in the following table 

 to estimate the original stand of pine for the several river basins. 

 The figures are by no means high, and have been verified at 

 least, for portions of every basin as explained further on. 



