MARYLAND GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 279 



RELATION OF LUMBERING AND MINING TO REPRODUCTION. 



It would be difficult to find a region in which the useful timber 

 has been more general!} 7 removed than in this county, and at the 

 same time, one in which so much forest cover has been left intact. 

 Doubtless only the non-agricultural nature of the greater part of the 

 original forest-bearing regions has prevented an almost complete 

 deforestation. In cutting the timber no pains were taken to assist 

 the reproduction of original timber species. The purpose of all cut- 

 tings was the same, whether for sawlogs, tan-bark, ties, or mining 

 props; the largest amount of useful material, regardless of conse- 

 quences, was the prime object. That all but the twenty-five or thirty 

 per cent of arable land in the county has continued to bear a forest 

 cover, is evidence of the greatest natural persistence in reproduction, 

 which often takes place under very unfavorable conditions. 



The reforesting of denuded land in this humid region is, therefore, 

 one of the easiest problems. In spite of abusive methods of lumber- 

 ing and other cutting there is no evidence of the disappearance of any 

 of the original timber species. A careful study of the young tim- 

 ber and seedlings shows all the old species to be present in the young 

 growth. The absence, however, of large-sized trees of certain 

 species, in fact, sometimes of any but small seedlings, usually sug- 

 gests to the casual observer that once prevalent trees have perma- 

 nently disappeared from a region. The fact also that the commer- 

 cial supply of such timber as White and Shortleaf Pine appears to 

 remain exhausted, may add to the impression that these trees can 

 never again produce the original abundance of timber. But the 

 natural reproduction of these trees in this region is peculiarly good. 

 It required one to two or more hundred years to produce the supply 

 of large White and Shortleaf Pine found in this county forty years 

 ago; and the various stages of struggle between the contending hard- 

 woods and pines for the possession of this ground were unseen by those 

 who cut off the finally dominant pines. Much of the area thus 

 wooded now bears a principally young deciduous forest with only 

 scattered remnants of the once abundant pine; trees which at the 

 time the larger timber was taken escaped the axe either because they 



