Morning journal and courier., 1891-02-05
SOMETHING ABOUT "DUFr.,
Hts Important Part in the Economy
 ofthe Forests.


 From the New York Tribuue.l
 ''There is a monstrous lot of ignorance about forestry in this country" said an old Maine woodsman the other day ''Many even of those who want to see our forests preserved have no intelligent con ception of the part which forests play in the economy of nature. There is w. H. II. Murray, for instance, an intelligent man who knows a good deal about wood craft, and yet he falls into the mistake that forests can be thinned out by judi cious cutting of the old trees without any evil results. As matter of fact, such a practice, at least in Maine, would destroy the lumber industry, as we'll as the forests. for it would let in the sunlight and that would most effectually dry up the duff :
 You don't know what duff is. Of course not; and yet duff is one of the most wonderful of natures provisions for the storage of moisture. necessary for the trees themselves and for the lumbermen. Of course you know that all tree felling takes place in winter. The trees felled are hauled on the ice of lakes. ponds, rivers where they can be easily launched in the
 
 appears until late in June, or into July, the lumberman is busy on the drive. working his logs to market by water. Everything in fact depends on good sup ply of water And if it fails early in the spring before his work is done his logs are hung up for that year, resulting in a se rious loss to him. Not only, therefore, must the water be high, but it must con tinue high for many weeks; and this is where nature comes in with her duff
 ''You know how quickly the spring freshets subside in open and cultivated country where the sun has n chance to melt the ice and snow Within a few days, may be, the earth dries up and the swollen rivers and brooks subside to their ordinary summer condition. But Tn the primeval forest it is not so. Here for gen. eration after generation trees have sprout- ed. grown and died, and each succeeding year the great bulk of buds and leaves which have been fed by the sap and the atmosphere wither and fall to the ground. In this way, in process of time, Is formed a mass often covered with beautiful moss, sometimes two or three feet deep, known to the lumbermen as duff" 1t is simply huge sponge, which absorbs millions of gallons of water from the fall rains which is later most effectually sealed up by the frost, and is then covered by the winter snows. If the sunlight should be let in on it by thinning the trees it would disap- pear in one season. But if nature Is not interferred with q most wonderful process takes place.
 "When the spring thaw occurs the ice, snow and frozen moisture ill the open country are quickly released and help to swell the running streams. While this lasts the lumberman gets more water than he needs, but it doesn't last long. Then the duff appears as his good angel On the watershed of the waters through which his drive passes there lies this huge sponge, two or three feet thick and hum dreds of square miles in extent, saturated to the brim with water. And, as the heat increases, Dame Nature proceeds gradual ly to squeeze and wiring out this sponge, not in one day or one week, but all through the spring and well into July As result of this invisible compression wa ter slowly oozes from under every rock,