202 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



force out a new growth from the trunk, or the surface of the ground, but 

 the evergreen can do neither; then the fire will destroy the seeds of all the 

 evergreens that may by lying on the ground, while many of the acorns, 

 having been trodden into the ground by animals that feed on them, might 

 escape the fire and renew the forest. We find evergreens still scattered 

 in our forests, but we notice that every old tree stands in a position where 

 the fires could not reach it. 



The red cedars and arbor vitees are standing on the bare bluffs, in 

 the ravines, and around the borders of our inland lakes ; the white pine 

 on the gravelly bluffs, in nearly every northern county, but invariably the 

 old trees will be found where the fires could not reach them. Within the 

 past thirty years, or since the fires have been kept out, the red cedar 

 berries have been carried into the woods and old clearings by the birds, 

 and many fine trees may be found growing a great distance from the 

 bluffs. 



No one can follow this seed study thoroughly without coming to the 

 conclusion that the extinction of a species is generally owing more to its 

 inability to find an unoccupied spot suited to the germination of its seeds, 

 than to any disease, or lack of original vigor in the tree or herb. 



Where are the hundreds of beautiful annuals and biennials we used 

 to see growing all around us twenty years ago? They were not able to 

 push their seedlings through the blue grass sod that was creeping steadily 

 on, year after year, till in a very short space of time it occupied the whole 

 ground. The same blue grass and other tame grasses, so called, are 

 destroying hundreds of your native forests to-day. To satisfy yourselves 

 on this point, compare the forest land that has been fenced against stock, 

 with the land that has been left to commons, and you will see that young 

 trees have sprung up on the former since the old timber was cut away, 

 and give every sign of making a better forest in time than the original was. 



The forest on which the cattle are allowed to run is being rapidly 

 covered with the tame grasses, matting the ground and preventing the 

 seeds that are produced on the few old trees that were left standing from 

 finding a spot on which to germinate. I had almost said just as the 

 buffalo may have destroyed many a fine forest on our prairies ; but I wont 

 go back many generations, and will stick close to plain facts, leaving 

 theories to be used where facts are not to be had. 



Darwin says the oaks have driven the pines to the sands. He would 

 have been just as correct if he had said, the fires have driven the pines to 

 the sands ; for we know that there is not a spot where oaks will grow but 

 pines can be made to grow, and the pines will grow where oaks cannot 

 be made to grow at all. 



The pines will grow on quite as dry lands as any on which the oaks 

 will grow, and on lands quite as wet ; on lands as clayey as any on which 

 oaks will grow, and on lands so sandy that the oaks cannot be made to 

 grow at all ; they will grow up higher in the mountains, and down as low 

 in the valleys ; they will grow much further to the north, and as far to 

 the south. Therefore we see the wisdom of Providence in giving the oaks 

 the power to resist fire, and also to sustain life for a great length of time, 



