200 Forestry Quarterly. 



On the burn east of Niggerhead Creek quite a little vegetation 

 has started to grow. It consists mostly of fire weed, cheat 

 grass, willow and huckleberry. Scattered through the vegetation 

 there are a few seedlings but very few, and in the most favorable 

 places' there are small patches of good reproduction. Judging by 

 older burns on the localities which nave become restocked, one 

 can expect this tract to become restocked also in the course of 

 time. The growth on the ground affords the necessary protec- 

 tion to young plants from frost and from withering sunlight, but 

 it is quite probable that the tract will not become fully restocked 

 until the seedlings now on the ground develop into seed trees and 

 restock the areas around them. 



The prospects for much of the land west of the Niggerhead 

 Creek are not so encouraging. The soil there is very loose and 

 porous and is subject to excessive dryness in the summer. Much 

 of it is totally denuded and where vegetation of any kind appears 

 it is thin and limited to fire weed, wild strawberry and rye grass. 

 Much of this land will have to be restocked artifically. 



Assistant District Forester C. S. Judd, commenting upon the 

 above article expresses himself as doubting the wisdom of burn- 

 ing over the area for the purpose of securing a better reproduc- 

 tion. He says: 



"If there is already a tolerably good stocking of reproduction 

 over much of the area, I should hesitate to burn it up intentionally 

 merely because it might be burnt up anyway before it reached 

 maturity. In any operation of timber growing, we have to take 

 some chance that our investment will be lost ; on an area of this 

 kind our chance of loss is merely increased in degree but not in 

 principle. Most studies that we have made of the natural re- 

 production of Douglas fir show that after every successive fire 

 the reproduction becomes poorer and poorer, and therefore to 

 burn off a tolerably good stand of reproduction with the idea of 

 getting a better one would be fallacious. A very intensive study 

 of a portion of the Yacolt Burn made this last season showed 

 that on most of the area looked over the reproduction was ex- 

 cellent, but it was almost all of ii-year old seedlings. These had 

 evidently sprung either from the seed stored in the ground and 

 not consumed or from seed which survived the fires on trees 

 which were themselves killed. A second fire pn this area that 

 wiped out existing reproduction would necessitate artificial re- 

 forestation, since it is evident that not enough reproduction is 

 starting from the extremely scattered seed trees to restock the 

 whole area, although surface conditions appear favorable." 



