Abstract
PROBABLY about two million people in North America are dependent on the timber industry. This is at present carried on entirely in virgin forests, though replanting and conservation are safeguarding them for the future. Obviously Nature alone cannot have developed either roads or navigable streams in such parts, and it hence becomes clear that half the cost of board or beam is absorbed in its transport; hence this text-book specialized solely to this one question. The operations after felling are the assemblage of the tree trunks at convenient spots (skidding) and the long-distance transport to the saw mills. Up to the present, the cheapest and most convenient means of transport have been streams and rivers, but these are unsuitable to the heavier hardwoods; and much of the standing timber now lies at higher elevations and remote locations. The question is one of the value of the timber: whether it will pay for the necessary horse or power tractors or chutes to assemble it for water notation or for rail. The whole book is the story of the engineers' ingenuity in the adaptation of their needs to local topography, and they are the class who will appreciate this admirable and well-illustrated book.
Logging—Transportation:
the Principles and Methods of Log Transportation in the United States and Canada. By Prof. N. C. Brown. Pp. xv + 327. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1936.) 20s. net.
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Logging—Transportation. Nature 139, 654 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139654b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139654b0