44 A MANUAL OK FORESTRY 



Aspen wood is light, soft, weak, compact, and very perishable 

 in contact with the soil. The lumber is easily worked, seasons 

 rapidly, but warps and checks badly. Its chief uses are for paper 

 pulp, excelsior and fuel, box boards and veneer. As a fuel it 

 makes a quick, hot fire suitable for baking. The fiber is short and 

 therefore produces a weak paper unless mixed with longer fibers 

 as those of spruce. Mixed with about 40 per cent sulphite 

 spruce pulp the poplar produces a paper which is tough, white 

 and is in common use in the manufacture of books and magazines. 



On account of its rapid growth, its power to cover burns, and 

 yield a profitable crop in a short term of years the poplar bids 

 fair to become one of the more important trees in forestry. 



CHESTNUT (Castanea dentata). 



The chestnut is a southern tree and extends north only to the 

 southern portions of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. 

 It extends west into the Mississippi valley and south into Ala- 

 bama and Georgia. 



Chestnut prefers a rather moist loam soil, although it some- 

 times grows on sand plains and on the dry, trap ridges of Con- 

 necticut where, however, it is unable to compete with the chestnut 

 oak. Perhaps of all deciduous trees it is the most conspicuously 

 independent of lime. As regards light, however, it is more exact- 

 ing. The young seedlings cannot thrive long under shade any 

 more than can the sprouts which spring in great numbers from the 

 stumps. This sprouting capacity of the species is its strongest 

 characteristic, and the one by which, with each successive cutting, 

 it gains in the struggle for existence with the rival inmates of the 

 wood lot. Trees sprout to a more advanced age than any 

 other species, and vigorous sprouts are common on specimens 

 no to 120 years old. Seed years are not infrequent, but the 

 nuts are eaten so extensively by men and rodents, and are 

 so injured by insects, that reproduction depends largely upon 

 sprouts. The chestnut is one of the most rapid growing New 

 England trees. The young sprouts are especially fast growing, 

 often making a height of five or eight feet the first year. In 



