be well sheltered and fed and their comforts otherwise seen to if they are to keep up a rapid pace in the work during the wet and cold of winter. The tents are ample in size, each provided with a fly, a tent heater, and a folding cot. Two men occupy a tent, and blankets are furnished by themselves. A large mess tent with dining compartment, kitchen and supply space is a part of the equipment of each camp. In addition to these features, a temporary office building (of lumber, canvas covered) has been erected at headquarters' camp. In this building the director has his office. The additional office force consists of two forest engineers engaged in preparing working maps and in executing the topographic map, of one clerk, who receives and compiles the daily and weekly reports of the stem analysis and valuation survey crews, and a stenographer. PERSONNEL OF THE PARTY. The personnel of the party is, in a way, unique, and would be a surprise to most of us who have not been especially interested in the development of forestry matters. The director of the field work is a young man whose college training was followed by technical study in forestry schools, and by much active field service. He is a thoroughly expert forester, whose work has given him wide experience in the most diverse types of North American forests in the Carolinas, the Adirondacks, Maine, and the Pacific Northwest. There is an experienced lumberman and forester from the Maine woods--a delightfully genial, hearty forest companion and guide. There is a forest engineer of twenty years' experience in surveying and mapping railway routes and forests tracts, especially in the Adirondack forests. There are several graduates of schools of foresty who have in charge the subsidiary camps or the more technical matters of silviculture, stem analysis, and so forth. The majority of the force are college men, generally recent graduates, who are taking up the profession of forester for their life work. Thus, for example, there are two Princeton men of last year's class; Sewanee, Butler, Union College, Iowa College, and University, Cornell, and a number of other institutions are represented, and the University of Texas has had one man on the force. Among those at the main camp is a Russian-a graduate of Cornell school of forestry; a Frenchman, with de to his name and nobility in his pedigree; while the outfitting clerk is a stanch Briton. One's first impression on beholding the personnel of the camp is that he has come upon an outing party of college men-earnest, quiet fellows, to be sure, who carry the dignity of culture even into the woods, but men of college spirit and sympathies, nevertheless. The writer, in whom the campfire aroused the spirit of frolic, would fain have sung college songs the whole evening through, but the men had become more veteran than that, and took things more sedately, chatting and narrating in groups about the great log fire, or playing "high five" or whist by lantern or candle light in the tents, with a box or cot for a table. The climate must have had a subduing effect, for since their arrival the elements have turned themselves loose, at one time literally flooding the camp, making fires impossible, and leaving only wet tents and clothing to shiver out the night in. Despite this, however, even the new men, to whom winter camp life in any case would be a rough experience, have faced the situation squarely, and go about the work strongly and efficiently. The personnel of the party has been thus dwelt upon in order to emphasize the significance of this new forestry work, which is attracting men of high training and promise. FOREST WORKING PLAN. Now as to the forest working plan which these foresters are to elaborate: "The main purpose of this working plan is to outline a method of management under which the merchantable timber may be cut in such a manner that successive crops may be obtained and the condition of the forest constantly improved." "In order to decide how to make the first cutting so as to insure successive crops within a reasonable time and at a profit to the owner, it is necessary to know the present stand of timber and of immature trees, and what the rate of growth of the latter will be after the mature trees have been removed." The survey work will include, then, the following chief divisions: 1. Determination of the rate of growth and increase in the volume of timber. 2. Valuation surveys to determine the present stand of trees of all diameters over the whole tract. 3. Study of the silvicultural characters of the long leaf pine; its capacity for reproduction, habits of growth in different soils; its relation to shade, etc. 4. Sources of loss by fire, wind, disease, and other causes, and means of preventing or reducing such losses. 5. The making of a detailed and accurate topographic map of the area, showing relief features, drainage systems and main soil divisions. These are the things the foresters are doing now on the Kirby tract, and which are interesting enough to be given considerable explanation. 1. DETERMINING THE GROWTH-RATE OF THE LONG LEAF PINE. Some of this work is done in each of the four camps and will be prosecuted until a thoroughly representative lot of several thousand trees has been measured. The trees are not selected at random, but in every case sample acres of long leaf timber are accurately laid off by chain and in the path of the sawyers and logging crews of the Kirby Company. On these sample acres every tree is kept track of. Whenever one is felled, measurements are made, involving, among others, the following points: age in years at the stump and at the top of. each log cut out of the tree; growth in thickness (inches) in tenyear periods, i. e., the space on the scale covered by each ten rings of growth; number and length of sections or logs cut from the tree; total height of tree, etc. From some of these data the volume of the tree may be ascertained. By measuring now some thousands of trees it is possible to strike an average rate of growth in diameter and height, and consequently in volume. From these data a volume table for the long leaf pine can be constructed such that if, for example, one desired to find the increase in volume of a five-inch tree in ten or twenty years or any ten-year period, he need only turn to the figures in that column of the table corresponding to the five-inch diam |
