ough. But how are you going to tell them when standing?"

Wilbur thought for a moment.

"I should think," he said, "that the yellow pine is a so much bigger
tree as a rule that you could tell it by that alone. But I suppose a
younger yellow pine might look like a sugar. The leaves would help,
though, because I should think the sugar, like most of the soft pines,
has its leaves in clusters of five in a sheath, and the yellow being a
hard pine, has them in bundles of three."

"How about the bark?"

"Sugar pine bark is smoother," said the boy.

The Supervisor nodded.

"All right," he said, "we'll try you at it. You go along with McGinnis
for an hour or so, to see just how he does it, and then you can take one
side, and he the other. Just for a day or two, while Rifle-Eye looks
after some other matters."

Wilbur accordingly took a pair of calipers and walked with McGinnis back
to where he had originally met the party. Resuming work the lumberman
started through the forest, calling as he went the kind of trees and
their approximate size. As, however, this particular portion of the
forest had never been "cruised," McGinnis not only called and marked the
trees which were to be cut in the sale, but also the other timber.

Thus he would call, as he reached a tree, "Sugar, thirty-four, six," by
which Wilbur understood him to mean that the tree was a sugar pine, that
it was thirty-four inches in diameter breast high, and that it would cut
into six logs of the regular sixteen-foot length. It probably would be
thirty or fifty feet higher, but the top could only be used for posts,
cordwood, and similar uses. Such a tree, having been estimated and
adjudged fit for sale, the lumberman would make a blaze with a small ax,
by slicing off a portion of bark about eight inches long, then turning
the head of the ax, whereon was "U. S." in raised letters, he would
whack the blaze, making a mark which was unchangeable. No other trees
than those so marked might be cut.

But as other trees were passed which were not good enough for
merchantable timber, he would call these rapidly, "Cedar, small,"
"Engelmann (spruce), eighteen," "Douglas (spruce), fourteen," all of
which were entered by the Supervisor, walking behind, in his cruising
book. At the same time he made full notes as to the condition of the
young forest, the presence of parasitic plants such as mistletoe, of
diseased trees, if any were found, of the nature of the soil, of the