FUTURE OF THE CHESTNUT TREE 557 



more, vigorous trunks remain, which on reaching a suitable size are cut 

 down and used for railroad ties, telegraph poles, or lumber, as desired ; 

 and from their stumps new coppice shoots arise, to repeat the whole 

 history of their forebears. In some regions this coppicing has gone on 

 for four or five generations of sprouts. 



The question now before us is, "Does this continued coppicing 

 weaken the vitality of the chestnut tree and thus make it more suscep- 

 tible to disease?" The general opinion seems to be in the affirmative. 

 Zon, 11 speaking of the chestnut in southern Maryland says : 



It must not be forgotten, however, that a chestnut stump can not go on 

 coppicing forever. With each new generation of sprouts, the stump becomes 

 more and more weakened, and hence gradually loses its capacity to produce 

 healthy and vigorous sprouts. Although it is impossible to state with certainty 

 how many generations of chestnut can be raised from the same stock without im- 

 pairing the vitality of the sprouts, the effects of repeated and bad coppicing 

 manifest themselves in the increasing number of dying chestnuts all over Mary- 

 land. The immediate cause of their death can nearly always be traced to at- 

 tacks of either insects or fungi, yet the prime reason is their decreased vitality, 

 which makes them easy prey to their natural enemies. 



As stated by Dr. Clinton: 12 



It is certainly a curious coincidence that the blight makes its first appearance 

 and causes its greatest damage in the regions where the chestnut has suffered 

 most from repeated cutting over. 



Dr. Clinton quotes Nellis, of the U. S. Forest Service, who, in an unpub- 

 lished working plan on "Utilization of Blight-killed Chestnut," writes: 



It is expected that this study will show that the present range of the chest- 

 nut bark disease is in a region of entirely second growth chestnut, which has 

 been culled of its most valuable timber, where only rough products are now 

 being produced. 



Without entering into the discussion as to the relation of the bark 

 disease to coppiced areas, I will merely state that coppiced chestnut is in 

 general apt to be affected with disease of some sort. Especially frequent 

 are heart-rotting fungi which may enter by way of the decaying parent 

 stump, and the unsound condition of the trunk they cause is communi- 

 cated to succeeding generations. It is also conceivable that the root 

 system of the sprouts, inasmuch as it is partly that of the parent tree, 

 may be weaker on this account. For, although we have no evidence to 

 prove that the parent root system becomes inherently weaker with age, 

 yet it is reasonable to expect that the soil about it would become more 

 and more exhausted of its nourishment, to say nothing of possible ex- 

 ternal injuries to which it might be subjected in the course of a long 

 period of time. 



As already intimated, forest fires are extremely disastrous to the 



11 Zon, R., ' ' Chestnut in Southern Maryland, ' ' Bureau of Forestry, TJ. S. 

 Dept. of Agrie. Bull., 53: 29, 1904. 



12 Clinton, G. P., loc. cit., p. 402. 



