FLOATING AND RAFTING 385 
vania, from 25 to 40 per cent; and yellow pine, from 20 to 33 
per cent. The loss in the Lake States may be as high as 30 per 
cent.^ On short drives of coniferous timber the loss is small and 
may be from zero to 3 per cent. This loss is due chiefly to sunken 
and stranded logs and not to the deterioration of sap-wood.- 
Floods and storms have caused heavy losses to lumbermen who 
operate on the large streams.^ Booms break and loose logs are 
carried past the mills and deposited on the banks at points below, 
or carried out to sea. Where logs are deposited on lands adjacent 
to the streams heavy expense is incurred, not only in getting the 
logs back in the stream but in the payment of damages to owners 
on whose property the logs are deposited. It seldom is profit- 
able to return logs upstream to the mill and they are often sold 
at a sacrifice to mills below. 
Some States have passed laws regulating the fee that parties 
may charge for catching stray logs that are afloat, and the con- 
ditions under which log catchers may operate.* 
^ In the case of James L. Gates vs. Elliott C. Young, lumber inspector of 
District No. 2, Wisconsin, tried in the courts of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, 1901, an 
attempt was made by plaintiff to compel defendant to reimburse him for dif- 
ference in scale between the "bank" and the boom. During the trial, prom- 
inent lumbermen from the Black River district testified that "there might 
and would occur a difference between the woods and mouth scale of from 10 
to 30 per cent." 
2 A study of log loss in driving in Eastern Canada showed that out of a 
total of 101,000 logs, 2.21 per cent sank. Eastern spruce represented 5.1 
per cent of the sunken logs, and balsam fir, 94.4 per cent. One hundred and 
eighty-one balsam logs and forty-one spruce logs, 9.92 of the total contained 
rot. 
* Notable instances are the floods on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, 
which cau-sed great loss to operators at Williamsport. In 1860, 50,000,000 
feet of logs were carried away, followed in 1861 with a loss nearly as great. 
In 1889, 300,000,000 feet were carried down the river but a considerable 
quantity of logs were salvaged. Another flood occurred in 1894, when 
150,000,000 feet were strewn along the river from Williamsport to Chesapeake 
Bay. Although many logs from these floods were recovered the loss to the 
owners was nevertheless very great. 
Floods on the Penobscot River in Maine in December, 1901, carried to sea 
about 7,000,000 feet of logs, valued at $100,000. 
* The legal fee in Pennsylvania is 50 cents for each thousand feet log scale, 
held and delivered to the owner. 
The legal fee on the Guyandotte River in West Virginia and Kentucky is 25 
cents per log. 
A stringent State law in Washington forbids anyone catching runaway logs 
