The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-09-11
PER11s OF BARK FEELINGS.
Life a Daily Risk From Mosquitoes,
 Copnerheads and Rattlesnakes.

Life a Daily Risk From Mosquitoes,
 Copperheads and Rattlesnakes.
 An army of husky woods on through out central Pennsylvanta's timber woods have just completed another seasons bark peeling May, June and July are the months in which the bark peelers hump themselves" and be- tween the time necessary to kin rattle- snakes and fight mosquitoes, the peel- CTS are tearing great slabs of brown coating off ponderous hernlocks and cutting the latter into board lengths for the loggers next winter. Except for the Hazardous work of log driving, there is no branch of numbering that commands the wages or entails the dangers that bark peeling does..@
 Scores of hardly chaps who gladly ac- cept employment in sawnills or at logging when snow lies on the ground would no more help peel bark than they would fly. The danger of falling trees must be recleoned with but the prinipal drawback is the experiences had with snaSes-rattlers sand copperheads. On Cooks Run this season alone two crews of bark 8Seelers killed seventy eight rattlesnakes and over forty eop- perheads. Two men were bitten by the rattlers and a third by q copperhead, As rule the men are more fearful of the copperheads than they are of the rattlers, for the reason that this va riety of snake appears to have a lik- ing for the small and cool of the fresh bark, so that they curl up under a slab of bark and are often lifted up by the men before their presence is dis covered
 Bark peelers are the trail blazers into unbroken wilderness and deep swamps, so that the denizens and dan gers of the forest are theirs to contend with originally.
 Mosquitoes to contendefoomun-v - Mosquitoes during tune and July are 8 dangerous pest. Bark peelers have gone blind from the onslaught of the pests stirred up by the swamps in the deep, dark swamps. Every eeler each morning is rovlded at camp with a half-pint bottle filled with a mixture of coal tar and sweet oil, and this stuff 1 is applied on face and hands and arms | though care must be used not to get it in the eyes, else a lay-off of several days will be required to doctor up the optics Bark peelers are also always provided with strong string, with | Uhi0h fn hind lao by snake, for the best proved remedy to prevent the spread of the serpent's S poison thoughtout the system is to quickly aply a compress above the wound and stop circulation below that point. A man bitten by a snake is al- so plentifully dosed with whiskey.
 The wage of a bark peeler is from $2.50 to $3 a day and found--that is, boarded at the camp. Their hours are from A. M. to P. M, while their hour of getting out in the mrning is 4:30. Breakfast is served at o'clock, and as usual thing the cutting is not more than a half hours walk from camp. Bark delivered at the tanneries commands an average price of $S a ton. I of bark, though there are hemlocks felled in Pennsylvania woods whose trunks produce over cord of bark. A tree of this kind in addition to the $S worth of bark is of S15 value to the same mill man for it's lumber. The prodigal cutting of Pennsylvania S mammouth hemlock forests has made the tanners anxious as to a future bark supply, and the stock is being husband ed at the tanneries in great stacks cov- ering acres of ground. With proper roofing and sheathing bark thus stack ed will retain its tanning properties for many years, so that the extensive storage now in progress is but a pre- caution against the day when the
 mountains will have been denuded ant
 the punk peelers will have found thei1 employment gone. This, however, is ten years away.-Williamsport corres- pendent Philadelphia Record.