FORESTRY SURVEY 249 



ing their valleys, in cutting terraces and occasionally in 

 building up flood plains. Here belong the lower stretches 

 of Big Indian Creek and the part of Fox River within La 

 Salle County. 



4. Large rivers. — These are comparatively mature 

 streams showing broad deeply cut valleys and a consider- 

 able expanse of flood plain. In this part of the State they 

 must antedate the ice sheets and show evidence of more 

 active cutting due to greater volume of water. Only the 

 Illinois Eiver has reached sufficient maturity to be re- 

 ferred to this class. 



Xo forests whatever are associated -^ith streams of 

 the first class except an occasional fringe of willows not 

 more than a few yards wide or occasionally isolated trees 

 of river maple or cottonwood. L'pon the gentle slopes of 

 the stream valleys of the second and third classes are 

 developed the upland forests while bottom and swamp 

 forests are almost exclusively confined to the river bottoms 

 associated with streams of the third and fourth classes. 

 This report has to do principally with forests 

 associated with streams of the second class and is limited 

 to 12 townships in the northeast portion of the county. 

 Within these townships there are found some 5684 acres 

 that possess a sufficiently dense population of trees to be 

 classed as woodlands and forests. Almost the entire area 

 is in pasture and some would i^robably be more accurately 

 described as wooded pasture rather than forest so scatter- 

 ing is the stand of trees and so completely absent are all 

 forest shrubs and flowers. So intensive has been the graz- 

 ing that only in isolated small patches is there any repro- 

 duction in progress and the size of the standing timber 

 would indicate that these conditions have not varied 

 greatly during the past 2.5 years at least, for few trees of 

 3 inches in diameter or less are to be found. On the other 

 hand almost all tracts show cutting, very few trees re- 

 maining that are over 20 inches in diameter. This shows 

 that the more valuable mature timber has been removed 

 and according to the testimony of various people resident 

 in the vicinity much of this cutting was done 20 to 40 

 years ago. Only occasionally is there any evidence that 

 tracts have been cut off clean and subsequently reforested. 



