The Belding banner-news. (Belding, Mich.) 1918-1973, 1918-08-14
IN
FRANCE IS DIFFERENT
THAN IN U. S. A.
NEPHEW OF PAT ROWE WRITES
INTERESTING LETTER OF OP-
ERATIONS IN OLD COUNTRY.

EkATlONS IN OLD COUNTRY.
pat" Rowe has just received the
following very interesting letter from
his nephew, Chas. Roe, who is engaged
In numbering work in France.
June 8, 1918.
Dear Uncle,
Everything here is so different
from what you would expect to find
in timber country at home, that I
hardly know just how to begin tell
ing you about it. For instance, m
Der land at hcme has always been TIM
ber land. You log it off and turn it
into agricultural land. On it you
find trees of al ages and sizes and of
all the varieties that are native to that
Over here it is absolutely
otherwise. The land is so old that in
its lifetime it has been put to many
different uses. What is Low timber
land probably was, for a long time,
farming land or grazing land. Per-
1t was thought wise to make a water
shed of it and so it was planted to
trees, or perhaps some old time king
decided that his decendents would
find it, by reason of its convenient
location or agreeable climate, a COM
Portable hunting ground, so he had his
soldiers drive the farmers out and his
foresters were sent down to plant
trees and introduce few deer. Still
again, the French people found that
in certain localities the prevailing
winds blow the sand around making
considerable desert and the only way
to tie tbs sand down and reclaim
the land was to put forest on it,
and this they did in good many
places.
We are operating on one of them
now. The forest is like a gigantic
park, not much undergowth and the
soil--well if you scratch the moss
aside anywhere, you come upon plain
white sea sand. What there is in
the sand to nourish the growing trees
is an absolute mystery to me and yet
the stand of timber is fairly thick.
do not know just what it would run
team by picking its way, can just
manage to squeeze through between
the tree trunks.
The timber is all the same variety,
very pitchy species of pine called
maritime pine. All the time the for
est is growing the French people
are tapping it for tupentine. They
make the trees pay their own way.
Where we are, the trees average
abol t 40 years old-you would call it
small stuff. 1t does not produce
very much clear-in fact we don't
saw for clear. We saw always for
quaint ty and for certain sizes and
never for grade. The trees here are
scattered about just as they are in
any forest, but / have seen forests
over here where the trees were 70 or
80 years old and they stood in definite
rows just like corn stalks. While
Fance is sacrificing her forests now
to great extent, still she is not strip
ping herself bare. Trees under a
given size and age cannot be cut. But
that is not difficult, since it is like a
school, all the kids of one age in one
room-the younger in another and the
older across the hall in still another
room. Furthermore, since many of
the districts are dependent entirely
upon the forests for living, only a
certain percentage of timber Of any
age can be cut in district.
You see the French people planned
all this great many years ago,
even away back in the time of Ma
poleon. If you will consider that
100 years ago when not dozen people
had any thought of the great mber
lands in Washington and Oregon, or
even Michigan, France was already
working out scheme of reforestation
and planting timber trees the same as
they would cabbages. We can show
them a great many things about log
ging and harvesting forests, but they
have us beaten both ways from the
ace when it comes to raising and cul-
tivat ng one.
Some of the forests are owned by
the government. and some. privately
owned, but all have certain amount
of government regulation, the same as
our railroads. They have govern
tanned under forestry bureau, the
same as we have custom officers un-
der the treasury department.
They wear uniforms and it Is reg
ular life job. They seldom cruise their
timber. 1t isn't necessary. Every
district has very accurate maps with
the location and age of every tree
marked on them and the good Lord
help some poor forester if, in check
ing up, some of the trees are missing.
If you buy some timber, the point
isn't how many thousand feet per
acre-but exactly how many trees are
on the tract--and the seller knows.
Naturally their numbering opera
IONS are totally different frcm ours
in the states. The operator gets
of tract Of timber that
we would not sneeze ct. He sets up
a little mill-band-saw outfit that will
cut about four Or five thousand feet
day, puts little roof ever the saw
carriage and goes at it. His power
plant is an engine on wheels, such
as we use at home TO run a threshing
machine. lie goes out and hires some
Of the ne ghbors to cut the timber
into six, eight and ten foot logs and
peel them, "A couple Of mule teams
with big two wheel cars to haul the
logs TO the mill and in no time he is
turning out lumber. have seen one
mill torn down, move six miles. set
up and start cutting lumber again in
three days.