210 WEST VIRGINIA EXPERIMENT STATION 



their widely spreading roots. ( Fig. VI ). In fact I have observed 

 many such places where, after the trees had been removed and 

 the surface burned over, there was apparently not enough soil in 

 a square rod to meet the ordinary requirments of a hill of 

 corn. 



Through the southern portion of Hampshire county, the cen- 

 tral and eastern and western portion of Hardy, the central and 

 eastern portion of Pendleton, through the eastern portion of 

 Focahontas, Greenbrier and Monroe, and in Summers, Fayette, 

 Raleigh, Mercer, Wyoming and McDowell counties, we find 

 areas of greater or less extent ranging in elevations from 2,400 

 to 4,000 feet above tide water, where it would appear that the 

 spruce should be found in abundance, yet while it occasionally 

 occurs here in typical forest growth over a few asres, it is, as a 

 rule, when found at all, in this its eastern and southern limit, 

 in the State, simply as a few scrubby individuals among the 

 luxuriant growth of hardwood and white pine. The contrasting 

 drier and warmer conditions of the air and soil through forest 

 and open country of this region is, therefore, as compared with 

 the spruce region proper, unfavorable for the growth of this 

 tree in pure forests. It would appear, however, that when all 

 of this Allegheny region of high altitudes was Governed with an 

 unbroken forest, as it doubtless was just prior to its settlement 

 by the first white people, the more abundant moisture in the 

 soil and atmosphere attending this forest covered condition, 

 made it possible for the spruce to occupy, as the principal growth 

 all of these higher elevations which at present are covered with 

 other kinds of timber. The area or belt in which the spruce 

 was then found, probably covered all of the higher elevations 

 of the Appalachian range that rise above 2,400 feet, which 

 would be an area of about 2,000,000 acres, on which one-half of 

 the timber was probably spruce. If so, there was about 1,500,- 

 000 acres of spruce forests here when the first white settler oc- 

 cupied the territory. Since that time there has been a gradual 

 reduction from various disturbing influences. (Fig. VII.) 



