514 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



the young tree soon develops a thick 

 hark and will resist small ground fires. 

 In a region studied this spring in South- 

 ern Arkansas it was found that it took 

 the average seedling only five years to 

 reach a diameter of over an inch, and 

 become fairly fire resistant, when grow- 

 ing in open places. Seedlings growing 

 in the forest under partial shade grow 

 more slowly and may be killed by fire 

 at 8 or 10 years of age. 



But the young trees which spring up 

 on cut over areas would have plenty 

 of sun and room and five vears would 



be enough to bring them to a fire resis- 

 tant size. 



On longleaf lands, the fires are at 

 present so frequent that seedlings do 

 not have time to get by the first two 

 years when they are small and ill pro- 

 tected. If it were possible to keep fires 

 out of an area for five years, these 

 longleaf seedlings while still very short, 

 — probably not over a foot high — would 

 be an inch or more thick. Xone but 

 a hot fire in dr}- weather could possibly 

 kill them all at this stage. This fre- 

 quency of fires is not a natural condi- 



OLD VIRGIN FOREST REPLACING ITSELF WHERE FIRES HAVE BEEN ABSENT. 



