FOREST CONDITIONS. 349 



most useful, and here again we can boast of a great 

 variety, classified l?o1;anically and according to their 

 wood in two groups, the white oaks and black oaks, 

 of which not less than a dozen are large-sized tim- 

 ber trees, and some twenty or thirty perform simi- 

 lar service as' the piiies in covering barrens. Next 

 in importance may be placed the ashes, two impor- 

 tant species, the hickories with five interchangeable 

 timber species, the maples with four marketable 

 species, and the Tulip Tree or Whitewood, the giant 

 tree of the East, besides Chestnut, Red Gum, Bass- 

 wood, elms, birches, and the rarer Walnut and Cherry 

 for ornamental woodwork, with a number of others. 

 The relative importance of these woods, and 

 hence of the forest regions in which they are 

 found, may be learned from the estimated distribu- 

 tion of the annual cut as it appeared in the census 

 year 1890.^ This total annual cut, including all 

 material requiring bolt or log size, estimated at round 

 40,000 million feet B.M.,^ was approximately made 

 up of the following kinds and quantities : — 



Billion feet 

 B.M. 



White Pine 12 



Spruce and Fir 5 



1 These figures are not census statistics, which are always short 

 of the truth, but estimates based upon census data and other 

 information, rounded off to include unenumerated amounts; they 

 approximate relative conditions averaged for a series of years. The 

 present actual cut must be somewhat larger than this approxima- 

 tion, since the Census of 1900 places the sawed product alone at 

 35,000 million feet B.M. 



