FOREST CONDITIONS OF MISSISSIPPI. 29 



conservatively, this land will become a source of continued 

 revenue. 



The bottom-land soils of the Pearl River and its tribu- 

 taries, as well as of many other streams in the region, are 

 light and sandy, being derived from the sandy hills of the 

 region. The bottom-lands are, as a rule, subject to annual 

 overflow, and therefore a very large part of them is still 

 forested, although most of the finest white oaks have been 

 cut for staves. 



The prevailing type in the uplands consists of loblolly 

 and shortleaf pines mixed with post, blackjack and Span- 

 ish oaks. On the lower, more fertile slopes red and black 

 oaks enter into the mixture. The bulk of the hill land 

 has been culled of the virgin loblolly and shortleaf pine 

 timber, though in Leake, Neshoba, Win ton and Kemper 

 Counties there are large tracts of original pine forest. 

 Probably 75 per cent of the upland type has been cut 

 over. The bottom-lands of the Pearl, Yalobusha, Schoona 

 and Big Black Rivers, on the other hand, contain thou- 

 sands of acres of the finest hardwood timber, those of the 

 Big Black River having been cut over somewhat more 

 extensively than the others. 



One company which operates a large mill in Neshoba 

 County has 44,000 acres of timber land extending along 

 the bottoms of the Pearl River and its tributaries. Forty 

 per cent of the timber is hardwood and the remainder pine. 

 The pine is chiefly loblolly, the most favorable site for 

 which is on the sandy hummock soil near the outskirts 

 of the overflowed areas. Loblolly pine in this region is 

 particularly fine, and contains a large percentage of the 

 upper grades of lumber. When grown in the thick forest 

 there are often six or seven 16 -foot ^ogs in a tree. 



Three other companies, not operating now, own between 

 go, 000 and 95,000 acres altogether, chiefly of hardwood 

 lands, in Leake, Neshoba and Winston Counties. One 

 company owns practically all of the hardwood timber land 

 on Pearl River for a distance of about thirty miles above 

 Jackson. 



Along the Pearl River there are virgin timber lands 



