312 THE PLANT LIFE OF MARYLAND 



CLEARING AND CULTIVATING. 



Tobacco was from the first the important crop, and it soon became 

 evident that only the richest land would produce the best crops. 

 Since the best land was that richest in humus it followed that as a 

 field became impoverished, new land was cleared and planted to the 

 staple crop, leaving the older fields to the less important, and less 

 exacting plants of the colonists, and finally to the "Old Field Pine.*' 



In order to get a given area of the forest into cultivation as quickly 

 as possible, the Indian method of girdling the trees was made use 

 of, the slower method of cutting and burning being used to a much 

 less extent. The trees continued to stand for several years after 

 girdling, the twigs, branches and finally the bark dropping to the 

 ground, leaving the gaunt skeleton in the midst of the field, which 

 might even be exhausted and abandoned to its wild fate, before the 

 forest monarchs decayed and fell. This is probably the most waste- 

 ful of any method of transforming the wooded areas into tilled 

 fields. The method of "slashing," or cutting and burning, is only 

 less wasteful in that the ashes of the destroyed trees add to the 

 fertility of the soil, which may however be injured locally by the 

 heat of the great fires quite as much as the ashes can benefit it by 

 their presence. In each of the two methods mentioned, the first 

 desire was to get the ground ready for the chief crop, the trees being 

 only a hindrance to that end, and the wastefulness of one or the 

 other means used did not figure in the result, or in the plan. These 

 same methods are still to be seen in the remoter parts of the state, 

 although there are not many areas left where the trees are so much 

 of an incumbrance as to call for their mere destruction in order 

 to use their place for planted crops. The waste in present lumber- 

 ing methods is quite as serious as this girdling and slashing, for 

 not only is the crop of trees only in part utilized, but by fire, or 

 careless felling of the trees, or too close cutting, — often by all 

 three, — the ground is rendered practically barren; neither planted 

 crops being introduced, nor the natural one of trees being allowed 

 to restore itself on the area cut over. 



The present wastefulness in lumbering methods is a direct inher- 

 itance from the days when the trees were an incumbrance upon the 



