Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/735

Rh at the foot of the taller balsam and spruce. Then one of the boys made the merry discovery of the orange berries of the climbing bittersweet shining brilliantly against the bright green of a tall spruce, which it clasped in its tight winding embrace to the very top, while hanging its beautiful clusters down in rich and graceful festoons. At once there was a clambering and a pulling till we had added these gay wreaths to our varied evergreens. Such an outing puts iron into the blood and glad memories into the heart.

One of our favorite haunts was a piece of bush called Beechwood. Last winter we undertook to make a valuation survey of it on snowshoes. We first marked off a strip by tramping from one end of the woods to the other in Indian file. Then we counted all the trees in that strip, but recorded the measurement only of those of a circumference, breast high, of 36 inches or more. Two boys were assigned to each of the principal trees, one of them using the tape while the other kept tally. In the case of the boys in the illustration, it is evident that two of them are measuring one of the large beeches. In this way, we covered the whole woods in four afternoons, and found it to contain 670 trees, of which 270, or 40 per cent., were at least three feet around. All the trees but 90 and all the large trees but 30 were maple, beech and basswood, there being as many large maples as large beeches and basswoods together. The other trees present we found to be elm of two species (American elm and slippery elm), ironwood, yellow birch, hemlock, butternut and white ash.

At the school, we worked out the diameters of the trees whose circumference we had recorded, and then with the aid of lumbermen's tables found the total contents in board feet of the three most numerous species. Counting the lumber as worth $12 a thousand, we soon found out the value of the standing timber of our little woods to be about $800. Meanwhile, with compass and pencil in hand we had ascertained the shape and size of the wood, made a chart of it and estimated it to contain about eight acres.

In the spring, we studied the character of the underbrush and of the soil cover and indicated with proper surveyor's signs the large wooded portion, the two small open grassy corners, the marshy ground, the hill and the paths. Scattered through the wooded part, we placed signs for the principal trees, which signs we had invented ourselves from our observation of the character of the trees. The basswood, for example, we found most numerous in the lower parts, the butternut on the ridges. The ironwoods we noticed to be small but thrifty, shade not being so detrimental to these weeds of the forest as to many other species. At the close of the school year, a little lad of eleven summers had the bright idea of presenting me with an enlarged chart of our wood, done neatly in ink. Here surely is an example of self activity.

Early last April, we spent two mornings in the woods sugar