676— Report of the National Conservation Commission. 
THE WOODSMAN’S HANDBOOK. 
INTRODUCTION. 
The purpose of the Woodsman’s Handbook is to give a collection 
of tables and rules of practical use to lumbermen, foresters, and 
others interested in the measurement of wood and timber. The 
Handbook is not intended as a treatise on forest mensuration, and 
only such information is included as is deemed of immediate 
practical value to American woodsmen. More complete dis- 
cussions of the principles of forest measurements can be found in 
technical treatises. 
The first edition of the Handbook4@ discussed all of the log rules 
in use in this country and in Canada, or as many of them as were 
available. Its purpose was to bring the discrepancy in log rules 
before the public and to urge uniformity in the methods of meas- 
uring logs. In the present edition, which takes the place of the 
proposed Part II, only those log rules are described which have 
value or usage enough to justify special attention. The other 
rules are mentioned merely for comparison. Only three are given 
in full: The Scribner Decimal Rule, which has been adopted for 
timber sales on the National Forests; the Doyle Rule, and the 
Inscribed Square Rule. 
Certain changes have been made in the text of Part I, and some 
tables, which were desirable at the time of the first issue, have 
been omitted, because they are now of little or no value. Most 
of the volume tables are new and are the result of investigations 
made since Part I was published. 
The first edition announced that the second volume would 
include a description of how to measure growth, together with 
srowth and yield tables of American trees. A summary of growth 
investigations has been included in this volume under the chapter 
on tree growth.? 
a Forest Service Bulletin 36, Part I. 
b These growth investigations are givenin greater detail in Senate Document 
i 
