CHAPTER IX. 
RATE OF INCREASE IN TIMBER. 
The Rate of Increase on Timber Trees varies accord- 
ing to the kind and age of the trees and the conditions under 
which they are growing. Most of the pine trees cut for log tim- 
ber in this state have been upwards of 100 years old, and some of 
the White and Norway Pine that has been cut was over 300 
years old. Perhaps the largest White Pine ever cut in this state 
was scaled by H. B. Ayres. The tree was 253 years old, meas- 
ured forty-eight inches in diameter on the stump, and yielded 
4,050 feet board measure of log timber. The most rapidly grown 
trees recorded in this state were: Norway Pine 1co years old, 
thirty inches on the stump, yielding 1,050 feet board measure; 
White Pine, 106 years old, twenty-seven inches on the stump, 
yielding 1,050 feet board measure, and White Pine 108 years old, 
thirty-two inches on the stump, yielding 1,450 board measure. 
The largest recorded acre yield of White Pine in Minnesota was 
near Carlton. The full yield of this acre was 111,050 feet board 
measure, and alter deducting for rot and crooks 94,264 feet of 
sound timber remained. The average yield of White Pine is 
much below this, and large areas have been cut that did not yield 
over 5,000 feet board measure per acre. 
Marketable White and Norway Pine may be grown in 
about thirty years under the best conditions in this section, and 
at this age will probably be about eight inches in diameter and 
forty feet high. But such trees are then growing very fast, and 
as the approximate increase in volume of the tree is as the square 
of the proportionate increase in diameter and the waste in work- 
ing greatly decreases with the size of the trees, the cutting of 
them at such an early age would be at a loss of future profits. 
Such trees have very little, if any, heart wood, and yet this kind 
of timber is being grown and marketed in many of the Eastern 
States. In fact, there is very little heart to any of the pine now 
cut in the New England States, as it is practically all young 
