34 FORESTRY 



birds and may be carried long distances, escaping unin- 

 jured by the digestive processes and ready to germinate. 

 Red cedar berries will not germinate at all until submitted 

 to such a process. The fire cherry of the Lake States, 

 which springs up abundantly on old burns is literally plant- 

 ed by robins and other birds. The nut trees do not have 

 this advantage. Occasionally squirrels carry nuts into 

 an opening and bury them. Almost always, these animals, 

 in a good seed year, will plant large numbers of acorns 

 and other nuts and never return for them. But the rapid 

 reproduction of large spaces at any considerable distance 

 from the old trees cannot be depended on in the case of nut 

 bearing trees. 



The Extension of the Forest onto Abandoned Pastures. 

 — The growth occurring on abandoned pastures in New 

 England affords the basis for an interesting study. Grass 

 usually forms a dense sod at first drying out the surface 

 and preventing the germination of tree seeds. The first 

 species to get started are the red cedar, carried in by birds, 

 and the grey birch, blown by the wind. Both trees need 

 full sunlight and can spring up in dry places. It takes 

 ten to forty years to form a thick stand of these trees. 

 But the shade cast by them finally kills out the grass 

 and the seeds of occasional oaks or chestnuts are carried 

 in by the rodents, and grow rapidly, forming bushy crowns. 

 These trees will then, after 50 or 60 years, begin to seed 

 up the ground about them. Dogwood, black cherry and 

 others sometimes get started. But it is all a matter of 

 accident, how long it takes for the stand to work back 

 to its natural form, in which the forest is composed, not 

 of weak slow growing, intolerant species like cedar, but 

 of the strong species which originally held possession. The 

 great extension of the cedar over such old pastures shows 

 how quickly a species takes advantage of opportunities 

 afforded by clearings either natural or artificial, when it 

 relies more on seed distribution than on either growth 



