PORCUPINE in Ponderosa pine tree. An adult porky weighs 13 to 25 pounds, has 30,000 quills.

AST of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon there are several million acres of pine timber, on both private and Federal lands. Fairly recently the people in these pine areas became aware that, besides fire and insects, their forest has a third formidable enemy-the slow-moving, tree-killing porcupine.

No one knows how many porcupines there are in the pine forests of Oregon or just how much damage the critter can do in his lifetime. It is common knowledge, however, that his population is enormous and that he is causing serious damage and must be controlled. With this in mind, a campaign has been organized against the porky. The ery is "clean and oil your shooting iron, pardner. There is a lot of shooting to be done."

Good prizes are being offered for the man or boy who can account for the greatest number of the prickly animals. A hot contest has developed between Harney and Grant counties. Prizes have already been awarded in Lake county and there the campaign is starting on its second year.

The agricultural committee of the Poison Creek Grange at Burns is the strategist behind the porcupine war in Harney County and has prepared the contest rules for competition within two age groups, those over 18 years and those under 18 years of age. The contest began January 1, closes December 3, 1956, limited to residents of Harney County. Proof that a porky has bit the dust is to bring in his nose with both nostrils and a strip of hide. Checking station for porcupine noses is the county agent's office.

Cooperating are all Federal agencies in the pine area, the Bureau of Land Management with stands of timber on the public domain lands, the United States Forest Service with a large acreage within the several national forests, and the Fish and Wildlife Service with predatory animal control agents in some central and eastern Oregon counties. The Fish and Wildlife Service men are acting as technical advisors in the porcupine control program, particularly the use of poison blocks to make sure that the poison is placed in porcupine

dens and nailed in porcupine rest trees in a manner which will prevent killing of livestock and wildlife. Lumber companies and timber land owners are also joining in the campaign.

Sentiment has often been expressed, however, that it is not a united effort to wipe out the porcupine in Oregon. It is, instead, a measure to reduce his number in the areas where the large rodent has damaged or killed from 10 to 90 percent of the young pines.

Along the highway from Burns north to John Day, some 70 miles, one must look closely to find a small pine which does not show damage. The number of dead trees, dead topped and bushy topped trees which will never produce a commercial log but which are now occupying space that should be filled by healthy trees is of keen concern to the large segment of people in eastern Oregon who make their living from timber.

Porcupines also are causing damage to farmers and the producers of livestock. The porcupines feed on trees during the winter but during the summer and fall they raid gardens, truck farms, orchards, grain and alfalfa fields. Livestock and big game animals are often seriously injured by a run-in with a porcupine. The needle-sharp barbed quills of the rodent sometimes cause the muzzle and tongue of cows, horses or deer to become so swollen and painful that the animal starves to death. The adult porcupine has approximately 30,000 quills which cover the top of his body from tip of the heavy, stubby tail to the top of his head.

The old story that the porky can throw his quills is pure folklore and the idea that he is protected by game laws so that a starving man can kill him with a club for food is also folklore. He was never protected by game laws.

The meat of the porcupine is edible and tasty. Ed Zaidlicz, a BLM forester at Portland, recently broiled one and passed the meat around to his fellow workers. Zaidlicz used the following recipe: Prepare the porcupine by skinning and drawing. Soak in salted water overnight. Bring water to a boil. Pour off water. Place porcupine in cold water to which add one tablespoon black pepper and one tablespoon baking soda. Bring to a boil. Pour off water.

Hutchins, in charge of the first United States public land surveys, was establishing a precedent, obedient to his instructions from Congress. In his plan and remarks, he reported not simply on a line, but on the country through which the line ran. Having advanced only 4 miles westward from the intersection of the Pennsylvania boundary with the Ohio River, he covered 8 closely written pages in describing the slopes, soil, trees and even medicinal herbs along the way. Later public land surveyors perhaps never matched this record, but they regularly followed Hutchins' precedent to a limited extent by including field observations in their returns.

This eye-witness information appears as an "added attraction" in both of the 2 basic kinds of survey record; notes, whose main purpose is to identify corners along township and section lines, and plats at a scale of 2 inches to the mile, each showing the surveyed lines and corners within a township. These records contain a wide range of observations, as any reader of this article may verify for himself. Copies of the plats and notes may be found in county courthouses, state capitals, and offices of the Bureau of Land Management. The notes, for example, contain judgments on soil quality, remarks on the lay of the land, descriptions of vegetation, and information on streams crossed by the surveyors. The plats, while less informative, usually show streams and lakes and sometimes the extent of prairie and swampland. In general, the more recent the records the more exact is their descriptive content.

It is well known that surveyors have been constant users of the plats and notes. County surveyors throughout the 29 public land States have found in them the foundation of their work. Surveyors for the General Land Office and its successor, the Bureau of Land Management, have been guided by the original records in restoring lost corners. Field engineers, verifying township and section lines for representation on topographic maps of the Geologic Survey, have consulted the same sources. Intent upon the determination of boundaries, these workers have used information on the lay of the land, trees, and other features as supporting evidence. For them, the descriptive content of the records has been a means to an end.

Through the years, however, boundary-seekers have not been alone in attending to the plats and notes. The descriptions to be found there have commanded a wide and varied audience whose primary interest has been in the countries surveyed. It is with these persons that this article is concerned.

Looking back over the history of westward expansion, we find settlers and other land buyers at the head of the list of those who profited from descriptions in the plats and notes. For over a hundred years, the public land surveys were for them the most important single source of information on newly opened lands. Prospective land buyers who could not inspect the records at surveyor generals' offices could turn to published maps which were based on the surveyors' returns. These often appeared in emigrants' guides. Private map publishers were major users of the plats and notes throughout the nineteenth century, and their state maps commonly displayed as a selling point some such notice as the following:

Compiled from the

UNITED STATES SURVEYS Exhibiting the sections and fractional sections

Government mapping also relied upon the surveys. For example, the first accurately organized map of the United States west of the Mississippi, published by the War Department in the 1850's,

bted to this source. What has been called st American of maps," the General Land all map of the United States, rapidly bebest known map based on public land surafter its first appearance in the 1880's. nterests of accuracy, it should be pointed both the government and private published the surveys as much for the grid they ed as for the descriptive material they

with our air photographs, soil surveys graphic maps, it is difficult to appreciate importance of the plats and notes. We ght closer to such an appreciation by readwords of a surveyor general in Dubuque, ho wrote concerning northern Wisconsin 40's, "We are now very much in the dark d to the general character of that section ountry; we are very much in need of that certain information which can only be from the surveyors in the service of the ment." To quote again, a celebrated orator me period pointed with pride to the fact means of the plats "the superficies of half ent are transferred in miniature to the in Washington." Official exploring expeand even geological surveys were already ting to a knowledge of western lands by , but the single agency which would conkeep abreast of the advancing frontier des yet to come was the General Land ith its public land surveys.

me time around 1900 the general signifithe notes and plats began to change. Of hey remained, as they are today, the ultihority on the location of the original surers, but with respect to their extra descriptent they began to lose their old utility ssume a new kind of importance. More I and thorough kinds of mapping were bewidespread, and in any event a vast quanne plats and notes were no longer applicaontemporary conditions, since settlement cally altered the face of a country which ce adequately portrayed. But the outlats and notes began to be appreciated as a f finding out about past conditions otherond recall.

had become valuable as historical docu

f the first persons to exploit the survey for historical purposes was a professor of Charles A. Davis, who in 1906 published howing the original forests of the upper a of Michigan. Many researchers since e, realizing that knowledge of past forest n contribute to wise present land use, have the survey notes a rich store of data, inthe positions, diameters, and species of d in identifying corners. On the basis of s and plats, maps of original forests have epared with varying thoroughness for ichigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Oklahoma.