GENERAL CONDITIONS 3 



various degrees of lumbering and neglect on the virgin subtype. 

 The culled stands are few for two reasons. In the first place 

 even the early logging was comparatively clean because where it 

 paid to cut the spruce on the upper slopes at all it was worth 

 while taking nearly all the stand because it was of uniform size. 

 The most recent logging has, of course, been clean because the 

 demand for pulpwood furnished a market for all material down 

 to a top diameter of four inches inside the bark. Furthermore in 

 cases where culling has been attempted in the virgin spruce sub- 

 type much blowdown has invariably resulted and the final out- 

 come been identical with clean cutting. 



The cutover subtype is then the most common where the logger 

 has reached the spruce type. Even the paper birch has often 

 been cut in order that the spruce and balsam might be rolled down 

 over it. As a result this subtype is usually completely stripped 

 of its standing trees. What cannot be marketed is left to rot 

 on the ground. Fortunately, however, tree growth quickly 

 reestablishes itself if fire is kept out. First, pin cherry and paper 

 birch take possession of the ground and then spruce and balsam 

 come up under their shade. If given time enough the two latter 

 species distance the two first-named short-hved trees and the 

 stand becomes nearly pure softwood. Furthermore, competition 

 between the spruce and balsam is commonly more favorable to 

 the former because of its greater persistence. The balsam is 

 very subject to heart rot — Polyporus schweinitzii — and it is 

 rare that a tree over 15 inches in diameter survives. 



The restocking of the burned subt3^e is not rapid since fire is 

 pecuHarly destructive in the spruce type. Usually the weather 

 is too cool and moist to permit fires to start but in droughts the 

 thick layer of humus becomes very inflammable. Especially is 

 this the case where logging has opened up the stand and left 

 debris. Some of the most destructive fires in the unusually 

 lurid forest-fire history of the American continent have been in 

 the spruce type. Such fires are combined top fires and ground 

 fires. Everything is consumed and only the bare rocks are left. 

 Examples of the results of such fires are furnished by the bald 

 summits of Monadnock, Chocorua and Baldface in the White 



