REGENERATION OF PULPWOOD LANDS 7 



yellow birch, maple, spruce, and balsam, in abundance in the order 

 named. Towering 50 or 75 feet above this were scattered giant 

 pine trees from 3 to 6 feet in diameter, from 100 to 150 feet high, 

 and probably 200 to 300 years old. Had there been only six such 

 trees to the acre, they would have dominated it, but there were 

 probably more, but not sufficient, however, to form a complete 

 crown cover in this upper storey, except on rocky ridges. In the 

 latter situations we often found from 20 to 30 big pine stumps to the 

 acre, evidently indicating a pure stand. To one flying over the region 

 at that time in an airplane, it would have appeared as a 'black* forest, 

 that is, one in which the pines predominated over the hardwoods. 

 Passing To-day the conditions are reversed; it is a 'green' 



of the forest, that is, one in which the hardwoods pre- 



dominate. This change of conditions in the past 

 50 to 70 years is very interesting biologically, but it also has an 

 important commercial significance. Those areas which have yielded 

 enormous quantities of white pine are, commercially speaking, 

 denuded of that species to-day; only scattered groves on rocky, 

 inaccessible ridges and elsewhere an occasional tree towering above 

 the hardwood forest, remain. Not only this, but of still greater 

 significance to the future, white pine is not reproducing itself; there 

 are practically no young trees in the forest. Except on the borders 

 of lakes, the margins of swamps, and around old camp clearings, we 

 did not see, under the normal forest cover in our investigations last 

 summer, two dozen young pine trees. Yet we found old pine 

 stumps everywhere. 1 can show you areas which once had 20 pine 

 trees to the acre, but are without even a young pine tree to-day. 

 Moreover, there are no coniferous trees in the crown cover only 

 a solid mass of yellow birch and hard mapla. 



There are, however, abundant balsam and spruce 

 beneath this crown cover ready to push through 

 whenever opportunity offers. Note especially that 

 the areas of which I am speaking have never been seriously devas- 

 tated by fire, the chief cause of the failure of white pine reproduction 

 in Canada. Why, then, have these areas changed within the life 

 time of some of my audience, from a dominant pine to a dominant 

 hardwood forest? Why did the pine not reproduce itself after 

 logging and so maintain itself in the forest? The hardwoods were 

 probably originally more or less suppressed by the pines, both by 

 shading and root competition. The removal of the pine stimulated 

 the development of the hardwoods so that they soon filled up the 

 gaps. The crown cover below the pine was probably continuous 

 and cast a deep shade. The luxuriant underbrush formed another 



