30 BULLETIN 152, U. S. DEPABTMENT OF AGEICULTUEE. 
A great deal of the remaining old-growth hemlock timber occupies 
fertile soil, suitable either for agriculture or for raising timber crops 
of rapid-growing species. The expense of selection cuttings to favor 
hemlock on lands of this quality is not warranted. Clear cutting, 
therefore, is the best in such cases. Attempts to secure hemlock 
reproduction in the ensuing second growth, however, are obviously 
out of place. Unless the land is claimed for cultivation, some of 
the more rapid growing species which appear in the second growth 
are usually of more promise as the principal crop. 
The management of hemlock on level lands thus becomes a prob- 
lem of the best use of the existing timber, with no special effort to 
secure hemlock reproduction. What constitutes best use is deter- 
mined by market and labor conditions in any given region. The util- 
ization of all species constantly becomes more intensive, and the pre- 
mium once placed on waste both in the woods and at the mill is growing 
less as new uses are introduced and the value of wood increases. 
Paper-pulp and fiber-board manufacture has presented good opportu- 
nities for profitably disposing of waste. In some regions hemlock is 
going into pulp instead of lumber. It is in connection with pulp wood 
logging that tanbark gathering can be done most economically, since 
peeled logs are more suitable for pulp and less suitable for lumber 
than unpeeled. The use of hemlock for pulp has the further ad- 
vantage that it includes crooked and small logs of little or no value for 
lumber and of knotty tops and broken and defective logs that would 
otherwise be left in the woods to rot. Quantities of hemlock slabs 
are now sold to pulp mills by sawmills ; but much low-grade hemlock 
lumber is still produced, the value of which is often less than that of 
an equal wood volume made into pulp. Among the economies of 
the future one of the most important will be a closer discrimination 
between logs and portions of logs which will make high-grade lum- 
ber and those which will pay better for pulp. 
