SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 237 



wide variations in soil temperature, drought, and other similar 

 factors. 



2. The safest and most economical way in which to maintain 

 or build up the fertility of the soil is to return to it a goodly 

 portion of its yield of vegetative matter. As is shown by the 

 declining yields on burned-over lands, firing is inimical to the 

 increase or even the maintenance of soil fertility. 



3. Most stockmen concede that the fertility of the soil cannot 

 be maintained indefinitely if the plant cover is burned every 

 year or two, but many contend that growth begins earlier in 

 the spring on burned-over areas than on protected lands. The 

 facts indicate that there is probably very httle, if any, difference 

 in the time at which the spring growth begins on burned-over 

 lands and on properly grazed nonfired areas. Furthermore, 

 that part of the old stand which still remains somewhat palatable 

 acts as a filler for stock; it has at least some food value and 

 therefore to a certain extent protects the young growing crop 

 from being overgrazed. 



4. Burning of grasslands is considered by some careful inves- 

 tigators, as well as by many experienced stockmen, to be quite 

 as destructive to the plant cover as to the fertihty of the soil. 

 In the middle West and the far West the writer has observed 

 that some of the valuable shallow-rooted perennial forage and 

 hay plants, such as the blue grasses {Poa) and the fescues 

 (Festuca), for example, have been killed by a single fire. In the 

 Coastal Plain region of the South, carpetgrass and lespedeza, 

 two of the most valuable pasture and hay plants, are readily 

 killed by burning. On the other hand, such inferior plants as 

 " wiregrass " {Aristida spp.) and broomgrass {Andropogon spp.) 

 withstand fires well, so that where the lands are burned annually 

 the latter plants usually become estabhshed to the exclusion of 

 the more desirable species. 



5. The effect of fires is invariably to throw back the develop- 

 ment or successional trend of the vegetation to a lower or more 

 primitive form. The resulting inferior vegetation, most of which 

 is low in forage yield, occupies the soil for an indefinite period. 



6. The burning of grassland, chaparral, or timbered pastures 



