ho BULLETIN 272, U. 8. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
The trees are girdled several months in advance of logging. The pull 
boat, as finally developed, with its stationary engine mounted on a 
float or barge, skids the cypress over the soft surface for distances up 
to 2,000 feet or more on either side of the canal or bayou. The dredge 
boat, working just in advance of the pull boat in digging canals in the 
swamp soils, gave access to the cypress where natural channels were 
lacking. The advent of railroad swamp logging with the overhead 
cableway skidder was the principal factor in opening up vast regions 
of cypress previously considered inaccessible because not sufficiently 
inundated. The hght skidding engine, mounted on runners and 
pulling itself over the flat pine woods along the margin of swamps and 
known as a “‘snaker,”’ has been a valuable accessory, especially in the 
Atlantic coastal region. 
In the overhead-skidder method the logs are brought in by a car- 
riage or “bicycle” traveling over a powerful cable suspended between 
the “head tree” and “tail tree,” usually 600 feet apart (Pl. 1). In 
the heavier types, such as the duplex-spar skidder, the total distance 
covered is 2,000 feet in the two opposite directions from the skidder 
engine, which rests temporarily on piles driven beside the railroad 
track. The logs are pulled up to the main cableway for distances of 
as much as 100 feet on either side. Thus astrip 2,000 feet by 200 feet 
wide, or approximately 9 acres, is covered at each “set.” The smaller 
overhead steam skidder logs at each ‘‘set”’ successively a dozen or 
more strips 600 feet long extending outward as radu from the engine 
at the center, covering an area of about 26 acres. 
The cost of logging is discussed on page 15 in connection with the 
total cost of lumber production. 
GIRDLING. | 
t is the general practice to girdle or “‘belt”’ cypress trees from 6 
months to a year in advance of logging. The result is that about 95 
per cent of the logs will float instead of 10 to 20 per cent. This 
reduction in the number of ‘‘sinkers’’ is a matter of the greatest sig- 
nificance in cheap water logging and pond storage at the mill. Large 
operators, having considerable amounts of the more valuable hard- 
woods in mixture, generally use dry log yards instead of log ponds at 
their mills. In this case the cypress is not girdled. 
Under direction of a foreman, girdling crews composed of 2 to 6 
men each girdle the trees for a price per tree, usually from 6 to 9 cents, 
determined in advance by the general size and density of the timber. 
In order to secure early drying it is necessary in girdling to cut 
through the sapwood to the heart. 
Among: operators much variation prevails in respect to the season 
of the year chosen for girdling and the length of time before cutting. 
The majority prefer to girdle in the fall because the trees’ activities 
