VOLUME TABLES AND TREE FORM 
171 
Thirdly, a general volume table given in units of mer¬ 
chantable material assumes certain standards of lumber¬ 
ing practice. In one region, or on a property carefully 
handled, stumps may be sawed close to the ground, tops 
taken up to a small diameter, and every economy em¬ 
ployed in cutting to advantage the material between; 
while in another region, or on another property, a large 
percentage of the wood of every tree cut down may be 
left to rot on the ground. Similarly in the mill there is 
great variety of practice, — location, equipment, market re¬ 
quirement, and men’s capacity all having their effect here, 
as was explained and illustrated in earlier pages of this 
work. Then the question may not be at all of saw practice, 
but of the results of scaling, and here, as every lumberman 
knows, there is the widest diversity. The scale rules in 
actual use differ from one another in the values they give 
to the same log, in some cases by a ridiculous amount, 
while the practices that have grown up in their application 
are in some cases entirely artificial. Details need not be 
entered into here — a word to the wise is sufficient — but 
an example will bring the fact home. The Maine log rule, 
for instance, is believed by many to be the best commercial 
rule on the market, agreeing closely with the results of 
good saw practice; yet a Penobscot mill man once testi¬ 
fied before a legislative committee that buying 26 million 
feet of logs by market scale for a season’s stock, he sawed 
30 million feet of long lumber out of it and slabbed heavily 
for a pulp mill besides. 
Of the volume tables included in this work it may be 
said that their basis is clearly stated, including the num¬ 
ber of trees involved, the standards of cutting and mill or 
scaling practice assumed, and the responsibility for the 
observations. They can, therefore, to a large extent be 
changed over to suit practice of another type. The tables 
original with this work, those for spruce and white pine, 
are based on figures taken from a large number of trees. 
These came from a wide range of country, and the compu¬ 
tations show that no clear difference of form was intro¬ 
duced by the element of locality. Each tree was computed 
separately for its volume in the units desired (cubic feet, 
