FORESTS OF THE RED CLAYS. 19T 



thirty-five miles. Otlier extensive bodies are at Salisbury and 

 Lexington ; several smaller are in Guilford county, and a large 

 body extends through central Alamance and Orange counties, 

 and the northwest part of Person county. Besides these bodies 

 are the areas in Catawba, Lincoln, and Iredell counties already 

 referred to, and smaller areas in other portions of these counties. 



The forests of the compact red loams are composed of black and 

 white oaks, white and small-nut hickories with small intermixture 

 of Spanish oak, and along the crests of the ridges, of post oak; 

 but on lower hillsides and steep north slopes the yellow poplar, 

 northern red oak, shagbark hickory, and white ash also occur. 

 These trees in the most favored situation form a forest whose 

 canopy is raised 90 to 100 feet, and the trunks which support it 

 are free from limbs for 4(» to 60 feet. Beneath these trees where 

 there has been no pasturage there is in many places a heavy 

 undergrowth of dogwood and young trees. The wooded land is 

 for the most part distributed among small farms, and much of it 

 has been heavily culled of the white oak for building and fencing- 

 material, and in places the Spanish oak has been removed for the 

 same uses. Where such culling has been done and the woodland 

 pastured at the same time, the growth has remained open and 

 there is no underwood : and although in many such tracts no pas- 

 turage has been permitted for the past five or ten years, the 

 reproductive power of the black oaks seems to be so impaired, 

 possibly from the dry and impoverished floor, that seedlings are 

 infrequent and small, and few young black oaks are to be found in 

 the undergrowth now appearing, which consists of dogwood, 

 hickories, haws, and young white oaks. There are still many 

 fine bodies of hickory, although much has been cut from these 

 lands for numerous local buggy and spoke factories, and much 

 has been exported in the log. 



Old fields on the compact red loams are not frequent and they 

 are either tardily taken by pine, the seed being borne there from 

 trees at a distance on other soils, or sometimes they are taken by 

 thickets of sassafras, sumach or by persimmon, and in a few local- 

 ities by red cedar. Sometimes, however, a growth of mixed 



