SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



will see to it that those tiny tufts of green needles are 

 not burned to death. He has acquired at once a dollars- 

 and-cents stake and a forward-looking interest. 



Pine trees do not bear seeds every year. There is a 

 good deal of uncertainty, depending upon growing con- 

 ditions and considerable variation in the different 

 species. The long-leaf pine, for example, fruits only 

 once in seven years; the short-leaf pine, every two or 

 three years. For any variety, however, a couple of big, 

 thrifty parents to the acre are enough to assure the on- 

 coming generation. 



Cultivation helps and it also pays. This does not mean 

 tilling the soil and applying expensive fertilizers. 

 Roughly plowed strips of bare soil, six or eight fur- 

 rows wide along the highways, stop many an incipient 

 fire from a careless cigarette. Such "fire strips," zig- 

 zagged through the woods, check blazes that might 

 sweep over wide areas. In the ordinary sense, this is all 

 the cultivation needed to grow a timber crop, and "crop 

 cutting" is in truth a form of the simplest kind of culti- 

 vation: protection plus intelligent thinning to give the 

 trees the best chance for development. 



Crop cutting is quite different from selective cutting. 

 The latter is cutting off the timber but leaving the seed 

 trees. The first involves careful cutting almost every 

 year to keep down brush and take out the crooked and 

 diseased trees. Most of these can be used as pulpwood. 

 Later the pulpwood proper is cut with a wise eye to 



148 



