SOME NOTES ON GERMAN FORESTRY 17 



orange ragged bark, giving it its American name of Red Pine; it has two 

 needles only to the sheaf, I never saw a sheath of three needles, though I 

 believe this is so of Sylvester pine elsewhere. The lower bark is rugged, 

 gray, with reddish edges. If shaved down to allow a ring of tar, such as is 

 seen in whole forests of it where an insect epidemic is feared, the inner bark 

 is the same reddish-orange as the bark further up. Like all sandy-soil species, 

 it has an immense spread of shallow roots. The seeding cut, if natural 

 reproduction, is very clear, seeders on 150 feet to 200-feet centers. 



FIRE PROTECTION 



All through East Prussia the railroad fire protection appears to be 

 uniform and required by law wherever a forest abuts on a railroad. The 

 right of way extends some 25 feet beyond the outer rails. Along its edge 

 extends a shallow four-foot road of clean sand, sunken six inches below the 

 soil level, and a similar road runs parallel to it thirty feet further back. 

 These two trenches are joined by three-foot cross paths every ninety feet, 

 forming rectangles along the railroad which are either kept entirely bare, 

 only grass being allowed to grow, or else planted with white birch or locust, 

 forming a tall border of hardwoods in which a falling cinder can do no harm. 

 The forest abuts on the second path or road, while a third similar one with 

 cross trenches can be discerned running along parallel inside the forest as 

 a second line of defense, though this third trench is not universal. The 

 arrangement is however obligatory, the only variation being in what kind of 

 tree is planted in the protective rectangles. Occasionally they are used for 

 vegetables or nursery beds, but the general favorite is locust. I tried to 

 photograph some of these fire borders from the car window, but the negatives 

 resulted in a blur, with shutter at 1/100 second. 



Crossing over into Saxony, this protective border is replaced by an 

 absolutely bare strip, 100 feet wide, running along the right of way, usually 

 with its forest edge having a wagon road fifteen feet wide running along 

 it and connecting with all the fire and logging lanes. In Hesse and West- 

 phalia still another fire regulation is in force, there being twenty feet of 

 clear grass along the right of way, next a 25-foot strip of birch or locust 

 and finally a 12-foot road forming the edge of the forest. In all these types 

 of fire borders the law was rigidly enforced of cleaning the younger trees and 

 young sections of all lower limbs up to six feet from the ground, except in 

 the case of very young sections, of course. 



The fire lanes were spaced from 250 to 400 feet apart, of a width approxi- 

 mately the height of the trees in the- section. In young plantations the ten- 

 foot fire lane is quite common and thirty feet is usual with mature stands 

 of kiefer and spruce in Saxony. Along the railroad these lanes are perpen- 

 dicular to the road or nearly so, depending upon the lines of planting, to 

 which they are always parallel. On hillsides they run up and down hill, 

 notably in the big forests of 25-year spruce near Fulda, with 10-feet fire lanes 

 every 250 feet. 



SPRUCE AND FIR 



Going from Prussia into Saxony, the character of the soil changes and 



