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THE SOUTHERN CYPRESS, 61 
The stumpage value of material left in high stumps will often pay 
for felling and cutting up the tree. Complete utilization brings 
down the fixed or overhead expense, leaving the operating cost alone 
to furnish the basis for figuring the profit or loss of taking out the 
individual material. This distinction, it is feared, is not clearly 
drawn by the average operator. The installation in the main mill 
of a small circular saw with 3-man crew to work up logs from small 
trees, top logs, and others of low grade has been suggested as feasible 
in mixed sizes and under ordinary conditions.1. Logs of this class 
tle up a big saw crew and by reducing the daily output increase 
correspondingly the cost of manufacture. 
The second aim in cutting virgin stands should be the welfare of 
the succeeding timber crop, to be secured by early and complete 
restocking of the tract. It will be clearly understood that this applies 
only to situations which promise to remain either permanently or - 
for a long period as swamp land. 
The essential requirements for satisfactory reproduction in virgin ~ 
stands are sufficient seed trees and openings to hight. The vigorous 
smaller trees, left because they are increasing at their most rapid 
rate both in size and money value, will produce seed of the highest 
quality though limited in quality. The stand might be cut to a 
minimum diameter of 18 inches at breast height. A tree of this size 
gives a butt log from 12 to 14 inches in diameter at the top end. 
In virgin stands such trees vary from 130 to 170 years old and in 
second-growth or open-grown stands from 65 to 90 years. For the 
best results in reproduction it is desirable to leave standing on the 
tract not less than from 4 to 8 trees per acre, from 10 to 18 inches in 
diameter. The practice of felling overmature trees which clearly 
contain no merchantable cypress timber is beneficial in clearing up 
the area of pecky fungus, but undersirable where a deficiency in 
younger seed trees exists. Old trees quite regularly produce crops 
of seed, which, although less desirable, may be neéded for restocking 
the ground. 
Millions of young cypress trees are cut indiscriminately for such 
uses as raft binders, car stays, mud sills, and cribbing logs on tem- 
porary lines, where the ordinary hardwoods would answer the require- 
ment and should be taken in preference to young cypress. Some con- 
servative operators in Florida are requiring attention on the part of 
their employees to the protection and encouragement of cypress repro- 
duction and young trees. Groups or clumps of such trees are often 
unnecessarily injured in felling large trees; in some cases skidder sets 
and logging spurs may just as well be located in other places. The 
removal of the hardwoods should be accomplished to as full a degree 
as possible in order to make openings for the more valuable cypress 
1 To be located in the space beyond the main saw, 
