13 



and inferior species, can now be found getting a foothold In some of them, 

 showing that with a little assistance they might again become forested. In 

 some fields seed had come in from the lower bottomland woods; in many 

 cases it would be a question of planting. 



Dr. Pepoon says that in Jo Daviess county cutting away the forests 

 has resulted in erosion, "with all of its attendant evils." The Illinois 

 Geological Survey in dealing with the Galena and Elizabeth Quadrangles, 

 there says, under recommendations about erosion that if light pasturing 

 and getting the land back into grass are not sufficient to stop the wash, 

 rapidly growing trees, like the cottonwood and locust, can be planted, 

 and the fields gradually brought back into timber land. Then later, by 

 judicious cutting and replanting, the land may be made to yield a revenue 

 from timber, instead of producing scantier and scantier crops until they 

 become so small as to have no value. 



Competent authority says that leaf-litter should not be grazed or 

 burned over in order to have the maximum effect in preventing surface 

 run-off, and this brings us to the subjects of grazing and fire protection. 

 Suppose we take first the question of grazing and the problem of what 

 may be called woodland pasture. 



Grazing and the Woodland Pasture. Dr. George D. Fuller, of the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago Department of Botany, who has worked two summers 

 In LaSalle county and knows thoroughly the character of the woods in that 

 county, says that "grazing is so universally practiced that not over 5% of 

 the oak and bottom land forests show reproduction in progress at the 

 present time." From a strip estimate made in September of this year 

 in a 100 acre woodland and pasture of the open park type, classed by Dr. 

 Fuller as an "oak-hickory forest," we find as a consequence of grazing of 

 cattle and hogs that there is less than one tree per acre of the three-inch 

 diameter class of any species. Most of the trees are over 50 years of age, 

 showing that there is no future crop of young trees coming on. The trees 

 are very short boled, and while diameter growth was found to be rapid in 

 these trees there are only 46 trees per acre and a stand of 1881 board feet 

 per acre, so that the increment in volume on an acre would be very small. 



In other forests of LaSalle county, where for some reason grazing had 

 been lighter, we found the number of two and three inch trees had in- 

 creased to 62 per acre, the total number of trees standing on an acre to 

 348, and the stand per acre to 4,625 board feet. While this disparity was 

 in part due to differences in site, we can attribute a large part to the fact 

 that trees of the smaller diameter classes had not been destroyed by graz- 

 ing, but had grown up to healthy, middle-sized trees making up the bulk 

 of the forest and offering some chance of financial profit to the owner. 



In the ravines of some of these pastured forests in LaSalle county, 

 where moisture conditions were better, there were more trees of the 

 smaller diameter classes again and fermination conditions were so good 

 and acorns so numerous on the ground that with a little care in excluding 

 stock a good growth of young trees of red oak and other rapidly-growing 

 speces would have resulted. 



Some of these poorly-stocked, struggling white oak forests on rather 

 poor upland forest soils above Indian Creek hacj in less tUan 7 years pro- 

 the following crop per acre, ; 



