This collection of Stuever's popular columns celebrates the bond between land and people and inspires us to preserve our forest treasures.

A Forester's Log is a unique forest story, told from a forester's viewpoint-the view of John La Gerche, one of the first generation of foresters in Victoria, who managed the Ballarat-Creswick State Forest in the late nineteenth century. La Gerche's Letter Books and Pocket Books have survived to provide a rare insight into a bailiff-forester's burdens in the 1880s and 1890s. As a bailiff, he daily had to confront prop cutters and woodcarters, 'scamps and vagabonds' who constantly defied forest regulations. His pioneering work helped shape today's forested landscape around the Central Victorian goldfields town of Creswick, 'the home of forestry'. In the detailed correspondence between this amateur forester and his bureaucratic masters lies the human story of an ordinary yet remarkable man, endeavouring to strike a fair balance between the competing demands of local woodcutters and distant officials. Angela Taylor reads between the lines to create a beautifully perceptive portrait of a vanishing character type-the truly committed public servant. A Forester's Log is an illuminating and charming book which will appeal to a wide range of readers, both urban and rural, including those interested in conservation and landscape heritage.

The USDA Forest Service standard grades for hardwood factory lumber logs are described, and lumber grade yields for 16 species and 2 species groups are presented by log grade and log diameter. The grades enable foresters, log buyers, and log sellers to select and grade those logs suitable for conversion into standard factory grade lumber. By using the appropriate lumber grade yields, log buyers and sellers can appraise the logs in terms of expected lumber grade volume and value.

This report provides a general overview of current log sort yard operations in the United States, including an extensive literature review and information collected during on-site visits to several operations throughout the nation. Log sort yards provide many services in marketing wood and fiber by concentrating, merchandising, processing, sorting, and adding value to logs. Such operations supply forest products firms with desired raw materials, which helps improve their bottom line by reducing the number of marginal logs processed. Ultimately, sorting logs leads to better use of the available timber resources. Successful log sort yards are self-sufficient and have well-established markets and a steady supply of wood. Log sort yard concepts and analyses described in this report have broad applications.