1899- 



AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



251 



no mental effort to realize that conductivity 

 is a very important element in storm run- 

 off, and the yield of a ground-storage. 



It is to be regretted that the literature of 

 the subject is scant and unsatisfactory. 

 The greater number of the records of tests 

 that I have been able to collate are based 

 on experiments with downward filtration. 

 This is a very unsatisfactory method of 



determining the lineal speed of percola- 

 tion, the ingoing water is always in con- 

 flict with the displaced air, and the results 

 are vitiated. In my own tests 1 always 

 use horizontal percolation with free top 

 surface or upward percolation. Either 

 method gives very uniform results. 

 H. Hawgood, 



Los Angeles, Cal. 



^To be continued. ) 



Natural Reproduction of Forests on Old Fields in 



Eastern Kentucky. 



Being a Paper Read at the Special Meeting, Columbus, Ohio, 1899. 



Among the different phases of forestry 

 that I have studied in this region, I have 

 chosen this upon which to present a few 

 observations because I feel that it touches 

 a subject of first importance in American 

 Forestry. 



The vital question in forestry is, when a 

 tree falls will another take its place ? So 

 much of formerly timbered land is de- 

 manded for agriculture that the answer 

 must be no a great many times. And yet 

 if we are to have trees in the future the 

 "tall Oaks" must "from little acorns 

 grow," and the conditions under which 

 they are to grow must constitute the foun- 

 dation of all forestry. 



While in restricted areas, as on the tree- 

 less prairies, and on small tracts in older 

 and more highly developed regions of the 

 country, seed-sowing and hand-planting 

 may be resorted to, yet till forestry is a 

 much older science than it is in our country, 

 and forest products have greatly increased 

 in prices, the great majority of young trees 

 must come by reproduction under natural 

 conditions. 



I can hardly present to you the condi- 

 tions prevailing in the Berea region with- 

 out reference to the geology of the country. 

 Leaving the Ohio River at Cincinnati 

 we pass southward through a horse-foot 

 shaped area, the famous Blue Grass re- 

 gion underlaid with Silurian limestone. 



Bordering this, as though constituting the 

 shoe, is a narrow exposure of Devonian 

 consisting for the most part of black bitu- 

 minous shales, exceedingly poor soil-mak- 

 ing material. The beds lying over and 

 outside of this are clays and fine sandy 

 shales representing a great silting period 

 in the sub-carboniferous. The erosion of 

 these has largely formed the yellow clay 

 soil that overlies the Devonian shales, giv- 

 ing the "flat lands" glades and shashes 

 which are characteristic of this horse-shoe 

 strip of country. These lands are " tight " 

 in the vernacular of the region, becoming 

 saturated with water during the rainy 

 Winters and holding it till late in the 

 Spring. In the hot, dry periods of Sum- 

 mer they dry out and bake like brick. 



Above the shales, in the sub-carbonifer- 

 ous, we have a layer of line-grained gray 

 and buff sandstones which cause a bench 

 to extend all around the hills at this level. 

 This is succeeded by the massive moun- 

 tain limestone, twenty to fifty feet in thick- 

 ness, capped bv the millstone grit of about 

 the same exposure. 



It is to the readily eroded character of 

 the shales at the base and the resistant 

 nature of the limestone and more espe- 

 cially of the conglomerate at the top, that 

 we owe the peculiar and picturesque topog- 

 raphy of the region. Bold, outstanding, 

 flat-topped "knobs" with broadly spread- 



