134 



FORESTRY INVESTIGATIONS V. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRlCTJLTUfcE. 



to that time, furnishing raw material mainly to our Michigan mills, whose home supply is largely 

 gone. 



Eegarcling the importations of logs, it is interesting to observe that they increased in quantity, 

 without reference to the existence or absence of the export duty which the Canadian Government 

 imposed in 1886 and abolished in 1891, and the price per M feet also seems uninfluenced. The 

 necessity for these supplies to our mills, especially the mills of the Saginaw (Michigan) district, 

 began to assert itself in 1886, the very year the export duty was imposed to prevent, if possible, 

 these exports of raw material, and has grown constantly, the decline in 1895 and 1896 simply 

 marking the general business depression. 



Logs imported from Canada. 



Ye.ir. 



1884 

 1885 

 1886 

 1887 

 1888 

 18S9 

 1800 

 1891 

 1892 

 1893 

 1894 

 1895 

 1890 





Pine logs. 



Quantity , 

 M ieet 



974 



Value. 



I 

 $8,012 [ 



380 



2,300 



2 869 



24, 4*>2 



6, 350 



49, 242 



4(j8 



3,875 



10,839 



94, 287 



32,144 



261, 626 



36, 699 



313, 281 



7,5, 963 



651, 540 



127, 084 



1, 056, 355 



277, 947 



2, 359, 951 



212,231 



1, 860, 319 



157, 400 



1, 423, 489 



Pi ice 



per M 



teet. 



Spruce logs. 





Quantity 

 31 teet 



Value. 



$31,79J 



Price 

 per Jtf 



feet. 



$4. 66 



1 G, 820 



11, 165 



49, 440 



4.43 



j 17, 541 



81,874 



4 67 



» 17, 526 



88 773 



5. 65 



20,714 



99, 450 



4 80 



20, 360 



137, 298 



74 



26 073 



150, 898 



6.02 



28, 494 



158, -134 



5. 56 



23, 404 



141, 168 



6.02 



21, 103 



123, 254 



5 84 



17, 926 



107. 250 



6 00 



25, 095 



<J0, 990 



3.64 



15, 182 



86, 075 



5.67 



Hemlock logs. 



Quantity , I 

 M teet 



Value. 



Price 



per M 



teet. 



4,818 

 3,629 

 6,881 

 4, 2l)6 

 4, 512 

 6, 420 

 2,952 

 2,210 

 5,057 

 5,880 



O) >j1 « 



2, 217 

 4,761 



U9, 168 

 14, 752 

 28, 070 

 17, 447 



18, 383 

 24, 261 

 12, 288 



9,802 

 21,426 

 26, 036 



19, 71u 

 9,017 



18, 607 



$3.98 

 4 07 

 4 08 

 4.15 

 4.07 

 3.78 

 4.17 



44 

 24 

 43 



77 



4.06 

 3.90 



It will be evident from these statements that our virgin coniferous supplies must share the 

 fate which the buffalo has experienced, unless a practical application of rational forestry methods 

 and a more economic use of supplies is presently inaugurated. Since coniferous wood represents 

 two-thirds to three fourths of our entire lumber-wood consumption, and its reproduction requires 

 more care and loliger time than that of hard woods, the urgency of changing methods in its use 

 and treatment will be apparent. 



No more striking statement of the decline in white-pine supplies could be made than to cite 

 the number of feet in logs which passed the nine leading booms in the lower peninsula in Michigan 

 in 1887, namely 2,217,104,985 as against 505,134,656 feet in 1893, a decrease of nearly 80 per cent, 

 chargeable no doubt in part to other modes of transportation, but nevertheless foreshadowing 

 unmistakably the practical exhaustion of supplies. 



Another indication of the waning of supplies may be found in the increase of prices paid for 

 stumpage. While, owing to improvement in means of transportion machinery and mill practice 

 and to the close competition of mills, the increase in the price of lumber has been comparatively 

 small except for the best grades, which are becoming scarcer with the reduction in the size of the 

 average log than the poorer grades, the prices paid for the trees in the woods, the stumpage has 

 more than doubled for each decade from 1866 to 1886, as appears from the table given above. At 

 present it would probably be difficult to find any stumpage desirably located at the highest price 

 prevailing in 1887, and this year (1898) stumpage even of the southern pine has gone up to $4.00 

 and $6.00 per M feet. 



Eeturning now to a consideration of the consumption of wood materials in general we can 

 summarize with the statement that our consumption at present of all kinds, sizes, and description, 

 including the enormous firewood supplies of a round 180,000,000 cords, can not fall short of 

 25,000,000,000 cubic feet of forest-grown material, counting in the waste in the woods and the 

 mills and loss by fire. That means a consumption of 50 cubic feet per acre of forest, or 350 cubic 

 feet per capita.* 



Considering that in the well-kept forests of Germany, where reproduction is secured by 



* The largest part of this consumption is for firewood. According to the census of 1880 the consumption of 

 firewood must then have been 280 cubic feet per capita (figuring 100 cubic feet solid to the cord), and this amount 

 has probably not been reduced during the last decade. This firewood is not, as in older countries, made up of 

 inferior material—brush and small fagots—but is, to a large extent, split body wood of the best class of trees. 



