CRUISING : 35 
We had taken full cruiser’s equipment: A Forest 
Service standard compass, ‘‘Jacob’s staff,’’ aneroid 
barometer and notebook; and our first move upon 
reaching our station was to set the aneroids at the 
elevation recorded there, ninety-two hundred feet. 
Then, as we rested a few moments before starting 
out, we discussed the details of the run. 
I had learned by now something of the general 
character and methods of our work. I knew that 
reconnaissance was a sort of forest stock-taking—a 
gathering and tabulation_of the resources- ofthe 
forest.” The timber estimates of the cruisers, the 
topographical maps, and the silvical data compiled 
by our party, for example, would serve as a guide 
to the Supervisor in planning and carrying through 
future timber sales in the Black Range. And when 
all the timberland on the Gila had been cruised, the 
mass of information collected would form the basis 
for a Forest Working Plan outlining the policy of 
management—the methods of administration advis- 
able in the light of the facts reconnaissance might 
discover and submit. 
This much I knew. The process of collecting the 
necessary data—the actual work of cruising—was 
Greek to me. And now my initiation in that phase 
of the subject began. 
Frazer handed me a little oilcloth-bound book 
which just fitted in the hip pocket of my overalls. 
‘‘Here’s your field notebook,’’ he said. 
On every lefthand page there was printed a sec- 
