THE ART OF THE SECOND GROWTH 



VI. Ease of artificial reinforcing and possibility of soil prepara- 

 tion by plowing and by firing; of covering the seeds by pasturage. 



D. Disadvantages: 



I. Applicability to few sj^ecies only. 



II. Danger of partial or complete failure, especially in clearings 

 covering 100 or more acres, or in case of border trees unfavorably 

 situated. 



III. Danger from heavy fires where the soil and the humus is 

 baked by the action of the sun, with heaps of debris left on the 

 ground after wholesale logging. 



IV. Second growth consists largely of wolves, and of spreading 

 advance growth and of poles undesirably ramified. Expensive gird- 

 ling or cutting of seed-bearing weed trees, belonging to a worthless 

 species. 



V. Tlie annual expenses for protection from fire and for taxes 

 are, to a degree, independent of the quality of the young growth. 

 They are relatively high, and hence absurdly unbearable, if that 

 growth is poor, straggling and very slow to develop, all of which 

 is apt to be the case in this type of seed regeneration. 



Thirty years after clearing, the average age of the young 

 growth is not apt to exceed ten years. 



Soil values exceeding ten dollars — so as to give a figure — per 

 acre would make a second growth expensive when thus slowly 

 produced. 



VI. Groups of advance growth are almost sure to be destroyed 

 or to be crippled by logging and by sudden change of environments 

 (e. g., Maple and Beech in Michigan). 



Paragraph XLIV. The cleared strip type. 



A. The width, of the cleared strip is from two to five times 



the length of the mother tree. When one belt is seeded suc- 

 cessfully, another strip is out into the timber alongside the first 

 belt, and so on. 



Soil work is not required, provided the strip is cleared in a 

 seed year. Usually the soil is torn up sufficiently by the removal 

 of a large number of logs snaked or rolled or shot along the 

 strip and over the strip to the nearest road. 



One seed year is rarely sufficient to seciire full regeneration of 

 a strip. In the Alps, Pine regeneration takes from twelve to thirty 

 years. On hardwood soil, the weeds are to be dreaded, preeminently 

 so on fertile ground after fires. 



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