DISTRIBUTION OF THE FOREST STAND. 19 



(PI. Ill, lig. 1). It is true that sonic natural pruning occurs, but the 

 intense light of this climate is little checked by cedar foliage, and 

 so the undermost branches are not starved as they would be with a 

 shadier foliage or in a climate of greater humidity and less intense 

 illumination. There is no such thing therefore as a mountain cedar 

 pole free from knots. 



Although we have no very definite information as to the total area 

 originally covered by commercial cedar or the amount still available, 

 it is tolerably certain that the ground actually covered by the species, 

 including what is being reforested or newly occupied, has not been 

 greatly diminished. Cedar land is not of much value for farming pur- 

 poses, and tends after clearing to be rapidly regained by young growth 

 (PL IV, fig. 1). It would appear, however, that there are some note- 

 worthy exceptions to this. For example, instances are cited from 

 Bell County where cedar clearings were captured by mountain oak, 

 and a very capable observer in Kerr County writes: 



When the brakes are once burnt out they never recover, but very soon grow up 

 with different kinds of brush. * * * Some of my own cedar was burned about 

 five years age, and the ground is now"covered with shin oak and Spanish oak sprouts. 



The writer's observations as to the behavior of cedar on cleared 

 lands on the Colorado would seem to justify the statement that it tends 

 to regain ground formerly occupied by it, as well as that cleared of 

 oak and mixed timber, and that in many cases it is rapidly spreading 

 over slopes hitherto wholly free from timber. (See PL IV, fig. 1.) 



In general, cedar timber occurs upon all of the hilly or rough parts 

 of the limestone region of Texas from the Palo Pinto country to the 

 Colorado, and thence westward over all of the drainage breaks and 

 the escarpment nearly to the eastern forks of Devils River. The most 

 extensive bodies of cedar known to the writer are those of the Colorado 

 River breaks from Austin to the San Saba country. Mr. Howard 

 Laccy (whose opinion has just been quoted in connection with cedar 

 reforestation) says: 



There in a vast quantity of cedar on the upper waters of the Frio, Nueces, Llano, 

 Guadalupe, and Medina rivers. The scattered brakes begin a little way this side 

 [west] of San Antonio, are at their best on the heads of the rivers named, and appar- 

 ently play out about the heads of Devils River. 



The post oak timber. In a previous paper (Bulletin 47, U. S. Bureau 

 of Forestry) the writer attempted to describe this type of forest and 

 to give its geographical distribution in Texas. It is not a timber of 

 limestone formation at all, but of sand and gravel -covered areas, such 

 as the east Texas Lignitic Belt, the Cross Timbers, the Carboniferous 

 an -a in central and north Texas, and the granite gravels and sandstone 

 debris of the granite area. Smaller patches of this timber occur also 

 on old gravel terraces, as in the vicinity of Austin. 



