676 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



with their pack saddles and panniers, and carries the cones to his station or 

 other point where it has been decided to concentrate the work of extracting 

 the seed. As it takes at least two pounds of seed to sow an acre of ground, 

 and not much over a third of a pound of seed can be expected from a bushel 

 of cones, the number of cones that must be collected annually is large, and one 

 man gets only about enough seed in a day to sow two and one-half acres. It 

 is not customary, therefore, to depend wholly on the results of the rangers' 

 collecting. 



After the busy haying season is over, men, women, and children of the 

 country are free to turn out on the fine autumn days and gather the cone 

 harvest. About forty cents a bushel is paid, and sacks are furnished the 

 pickers. When coming to town for ranch supplies, or at times when the 

 teams are not working, the sacked cones are brought in to the cone house at 

 Eraser, measured and stored in bins, to await extraction. Helped thus by 

 their neighbors, the rangers easily assemble all the lodgepole pine cones de- 

 sired. 



When the arrival of winter puts an end to collecting, all the work centers 

 in the cone house. Inside this is a good-sized dry kiln, built of two thick- 

 nesses of lumber and lined with tight paper. The kim is f)rovided with tiers 

 of i-acks or trays, between which are coal heaters. The front is arranged to 

 ofjen so tliat the wire trays can be lifted out bodily for filling and emptying. 

 The kiln should easily hold 15 or 20 bushels of cones at one time. After the 

 trays are filled, fires are built in the stoves and the temperature raised to 

 100° F., the heat being regulated by means of trap doors on the top of the kiln. 

 For four hours the cones are kept at this moderate warmth. Then for four 

 hours the temperature is kept at about 130°. 



After the eight hours have elapsed, all except a very few of the cones are 

 open, and a vigorous tapping or shaking causes the released pine seed to scat- 

 ter out. This shaking of the cones can be done mechanically by revolving 

 them in a long cylindrical framework covered with coarse wire screening. 

 One end of the cylinder is raised 8 inches higher than the other, and as the 

 cones pass down, tumbling over and over, the seeds rattle through the wire 

 on to the sheets spread beneath and the empty cones drop from the lower, open 

 end into the wastebos. As all experiments in reseeding are done with known 

 quantities of dry, clean seed, it is very desirable to separate the seed, fresh 

 from the cones, from the wings, chaff, pine needles, and dirt. So the ranger 

 sweeps up the seed from the sheets below the shaker, and puts them twice 

 through a fanning mill, similar to those used by farmers in winnowing grain. 

 The clean seed is packed in cotton bags that hold 4 pounds each, and stored 

 away iintil the time comes for sowing in the field. 



