The next operation is performed by the °ringers* and °peelers.* Every 12 or 14 feet, as required, a ring is cut around the circum ference of the bark, and afterward the peelers with crowbars and wedges °peel* the bark from the prostrate trunk. All of the trees are stripped but surrounded with an immense ac cumulation of debris of bark and branches, which must be removed before the trunks can be sawed into suitable lengths for conveyance to the mill. The ground is cleared of this debris by fire, precaution being first taken to. plug up the °splits* in the trunk with clay so that the fire may not reach the interior of the tree. A foggy day is chosen and a still one. Fire is started and. in a short time the tract is burning with a fierce heat that quickly re duces the piles of bark and brush to ashes, and leaves an unobstructed field for the removal of the solid timber which has been scarcely charred by the intense heat to which it has been subjected.
The trunks as they lie are then sawed into stated lengths, and then follows the arduous task of conveying these enormously heavy sec tions to the railroad. Temporary skidways are laid down and roads constructed. Chutes down
which the logs pass have to be planned, and on these, guided by the skilful woodsmen, the un wieldy logs at last reach their destination. The work is assisted by donkey engines on sleds, which are hauled to the top of the steep banks and into seemingly impossible situations.
The yield of virgin redwoods on the northern fiats varies from 125,000 to 150,000 board feet per acre. About Humboldt Bay it was from 50,000 to 75,000 feet per acre; and on slopes like those in Sonoma County, from 20,900 to 3CI,000 feet. The redwood cut of 1916 was 491,000,000, the largest recorded, being about 35 per cent of the entire lumber cut of the State. , The amount of timber got out of a redwood forest is only a small proportion of what the stand contained. At least. a quarter of the timber is destroyed in felling and in the burning that follows, and of what remains all the broken and misshapen logs are left on the ground.
Bibliography.— Fisher, 'Report on Red wood,' Bureau of Forestry (Washington 1903) ; and authorities on California, especially Muir, and on forestry. See 'FORESTRY.