422 Forestry Quarterly. 



up to 20 years of age. A few sugar pines 30 to 40 feet in height 

 were killed, the trees burning like torches. 



If the young growth had not been killed, it would have devel- 

 oped into a merchantable pole and cordwood stand in about 20 

 years. Cordwood is being cut from timber up to 20 inches in 

 diameter on an adjoining tract. After the second crop had been 

 removed, it would have taken fifty years for the third crop to 

 develop since the nucleus for that crop was badly lacking. The 

 second crop would yield about 10 cords or 5,000 board feet to 

 the acre in 20 years and the third crop that amount after fifty 

 years. 



This burn has affected the second crop of timber by destroy- 

 ing trees that would have been ready for the ax in a few years 

 after the largest trees had been cut out. The third crop is about 

 totally ruined, and it will take at least five years to get any kind 

 of a beginning of the fourth crop. 



The burning has not furnished the older trees a protection 

 against fire since the brush will soon sprout again and come 

 in denser than ever as a result of the fire. The dead needles 

 resulting from this fire will fall and the foundation laid for a 

 hotter fire than ever. 



Last year a piece of light burning near this tract came to my 

 attention. It was an ideal fire from the light burner's standpoint, 

 burning slowly along in the pine needles and tar-weed. Of 

 course it burned up the tender seedlings since the tar-weed makes 

 a hot, pitchy fire, but it did very little damage to the clumps of 

 young growth from 10 to 12 feet high or the older trees. This 

 spring I looked over this piece and found it covered with a thick 

 layer of pine needles. The tar-weed was all coming back and the 

 conditions for figures were just as dangerous, if not worse, than 

 last year. This piece will doubtless be burned over again and 

 again and the condition reached such as is found in the vicinity 

 of Camptonville where there are stands of large yellow pine trees 

 under which there is very little reproduction on account of the 

 dense carpet of tar-weed which has developed as a result of re- 

 peated burnings. 



This light burning was done in the vicinity of the Rock 

 Creek fire last summer which burned about 250 acres of second 

 growth timber and brush land. The land it burned over had 

 been repeatedly light-burned but the results attained interposed 

 no barrier to the progress of the crown fire of last summer. 



