"Two Blades of Grass Where One Grew Before"
Moreover, when the buyers come to cut, the ranger marks each tree, leaving out all those below a certain size for future growth, and also a certain number for seed purposes, that reproduction may follow. Again, the buyers are required to cut the stumps low, generally at a height equal to the diameter. Under old methods they cut them off high up, where it was easier for the ax and saw men to work, thus leaving in the stump a waste equal to more than ten per cent. of the measured value of the tree. "Two blades of grass" here surely!
Under the old methods, if the logs had to be "snaked" out, the loggers took the shortest cut, and if that cut led through a dense thicket of young trees, the logs were dragged through them, so that millions of young trees were destroyed each year by this recklessness alone. To-day the ranger sees to it that they go around such little groves, or, if it is absolutely unavoidable, a straight and narrow way is cut through them to which the loggers must keep, thus reducing the damage to the minimum. "Two blades of grass" here also.
In the old days of reckless lumbering only the best of the tree was used. A single log was taken, and the rest left to waste. Now the watchful "scaler" sees to it that the logs are cut with judgment, so as to utilize every foot of saw timber.
When the logging is finished on a tract, according to the government contract, the brush must be carefully piled by the lumberman far enough away from other trees or young stuff to cause no damage when it is burned by the rangers. Under the early methods the "slashings," as cut-over areas were called, were an almost impassable mass of dead tree-tops and logs, a most fruitful and dangerous source and auxiliary of forest fires.
