242 REPORT OF THE 



The spruce, which in late years has formed so large a part of our lumber pro- 

 duct, was confined mostly to the Adirondack plateau and the Catskill slopes. It 

 formed no part of the forest in the western or southwestern portions of the State ; 

 neither did it appear in the southern tier of counties, along the Pennsylvania line, 

 west of Broome county. The lumbermen who operated along the valleys of the 

 Chemung, Tioga, Allegany and Genesee rivers cut no spruce, many of them living 

 and dying without ever seeing a tree of this species. 



It is unnecessary here to define the habitat of the other evergreen species ; for 

 the lumbermen used none of them until quite recently. The balsam, which is con- 

 fined almost entirely to the Adirondack forests, is now cut to a limited extent for 

 pulpwood and lumber ; and the white cedar of that region has something of a 

 market now in the way of shingles, posts and telegraph poles. 



The hardwoods, or broadleaved trees, were present everywhere, mixed more or 

 less abundantly with evergreens, In some places within the primeval forest there 

 were " hardwood ridges," so called because there were no other species ; in other 

 places there were slopes on which pine, hemlock or spruce grew unmixed in pure 

 stands or great " clumps." Along the river valleys or bottom lands where the soil 

 was dark and rich with alluvial deposits the more valuable hardwoods — white oak, 

 ash, cherry and black walnut — predominated. Maple, beech and birch grew every- 

 where, on mountain and plain ; but there was no chestnut or oak on the great 

 northern plateau, and there are none there now. Such, in short, was the general 

 character of the forest which covered the territory of New Amsterdam when Hen- 

 drick Hudson cast anchor off the island of the Manhattoes. 



Until recent years lumbermen paid no attention to the hardwoods, and but 

 little of this kind of timber was cut, beyond what was needed for cooperage, 

 furniture or pyroligneous acid, industries which until the present time were never 

 prominent in this State. As fast as the lumbermen took out the pine and hemlock 

 the great hardwood forests that remained soon fell beneath the axes of the advanc- 

 ing farmers and disappeared in fire and smoke. 



TI)e Pir^t Sawmills. 



John Verrazzano and Hendrick Hudson made their famous discoveries and 

 sailed away without leaving a man behind to occupy the newly found territory. 

 No settlement was made by white men, no house erected until 1614. Just when 

 the industrious labor of the first settlers took the form which we now call lum- 

 bering it is impossible to say. But in 1623. nine years after the first colonist 



