30 BULLETIlsr 820, U. S. DEPAKTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



insects and fungi, the subject of fire protection is of prime importance 

 in management. Reasonable assurance of protection is necessary 

 before any expense in planting or management is warranted. To be 

 adequate; the plan for fire protection should include provisions for 

 patrol during the seasons when fire is a menace, the establishment 

 and maintenance of fire lanes, the disposition of the slash resulting 

 from thinnings or logging, and, on large tracts, lookouts and tele- 

 phones. (See Pis. XIII and XIV.) An accumulation of logging 

 slash is a menace to any live timber near it, not only because of its 

 inflammability, but also because it may harbor destructive insects. 

 Brush may best be disposed of by burning. Cutting in the fall and 

 winter and burning the slash in piles as the logging proceeds is an 

 effective preventive of insect mfestation. Fire lanes, properly laid 

 out, could be used in many cases as a means of dividing the forest 

 into cutting series or blocks for utihzation purposes and these lands 

 would make one block accessible without slashing into another 

 adjacent to it. 



Danger from windfall may be lessened by cutting first on the lee 

 side and proceeding in the direction from which the prevailing winds 

 blow. In this way the interior of the stand is not opened to the 

 sweep of the wind. Also, a short rotation will involve less windfall 

 than a long one. 



NATURAL REPRODUCTION. 



The cutting of jack pine stands to encourage natural reproduc- 

 tion of the species may be accomplished in either one of two ways. 

 The first method is that of clean cutting the mature stand either in 

 strips or patches 100 yards or less in width. Reproduction would 

 then take place from seed already on the ground or blown from the 

 adjacent woods. The second method is that of a general clean cut- 

 ting, leaving only from 5 to 10 scattered seed trees to the acre or, 

 preferably, 2 or 3 groups of from 3 to 5 trees each. (See PI. IX,) 



To make sure of getting jack pine reproduction on the National 

 Forests in northern Minnesota, it is sometimes considered necessary 

 to lop the tops of the trees that have been cut and scatter the brush, 

 which is burned in the spring as soon as it is dry enough. This causes 

 cones on the ground to open and let out their seed. Also, the seed- 

 bed is prepared by the partial exposure of the mineral soil. On 

 shallow soils with rock near the surface, brush should be burned in 

 winter while snow is on the ground, so that the soil covering will not 

 be disturbed. Fires should always be carefully controlled and be 

 kept away from seed trees and adjacent timber Wliere overstock- 

 ing of jack pine results, as is common after fires, the stand may be 

 thinned out at a minimum expense within the first five years after 

 the reproduction takes place. Natural reproduction and thinning 

 would be less expensive than planting. 



