aging river, guide the logs on these drives.

On arrival at the sawmill, the logs are reduced to lumber. Many
different kinds of saws are used in this work. One of the most
efficient is the circular saw which performs rapid work. It is so
wide in bite, however, that it wastes much wood in sawdust. For
example, in cutting four boards of one-inch lumber, an ordinary
circular saw wastes enough material to make a fifth board,
because it cuts an opening that is one-quarter of an inch in
width. Band saws, although they do not work at such high speed,
are replacing circular saws in many mills because they are less
wasteful of lumber. Although sawmills try to prevent waste of
wood by converting slabs and short pieces into laths and
shingles, large amounts of refuse, such as sawdust, slabs and
edgings, are burned each season. As a rule, only about one-third
of the tree is finally used for construction purposes, the
balance being wasted in one way or another.

CHAPTER XVI

WHY THE FARMER SHOULD PRACTICE FORESTRY

The tree crop is a profitable crop for the average farmer to
grow. Notwithstanding the comparatively sure and easy incomes
which result from the farm woodlands that are well managed,
farmers as a class neglect their timber. Not infrequently they
sell their timber on the stump at low rates through ignorance of
the real market value of the wood. In other cases, they do not
care for their woodlands properly. They cut without regard to
future growth. They do not pile the slashings and hence expose
the timber tracts to fire dangers. They convert young trees into
hewed crossties which would yield twice as great a return if
allowed to grow for four or five years longer and then be cut as
lumber.

Just to show how a small tract of trees will grow into money if
allowed to mature, the case of a three-acre side-hill pasture in
New England is interesting. Forty-four years ago the farmer who
owned this waste land dug up fourteen hundred seedling pines
which were growing in a clump and set them out on the sidehill.
Twenty years later the farmer died. His widow sold the three
acres of young pine for $300. Fifteen years later the woodlot
again changed hands for a consideration of $1,000, a lumber
company buying it. Today, this small body of pine woods contains
90,000 board feet of lumber worth at least $1,500 on the stump.
The farmer who set out the trees devoted about $35 worth of land
and labor to the miniature forest