502 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [DECEMBER 
It was not until April 1915 that I made another visit to these 
straggling longleaf outposts, which had interested me at first 
merely as landmarks of what seemed to be the ultima Thule of 
their advance in this direction. But a great surprise awaited me. 
The region around the gap had recently been burned over, and amid 
the wreckage of skeleton limbs and blackened stubs to which the 
weedy jungle in the old clearing was now reduced, there appeared 
a thriving colony of 33 young longleafs, ranging from a few deci- 
meters to a meter or more in height. This new growth was con- 
fined mainly to the old clearing, although the “‘patriarch,”’ whose 
progeny it presumably is, stands squarely on the border line between 
the old cotton field and the copsewood, and had no doubt dis- 
tributed his favors impartially to both. But the absence of trees 
in the clearing would naturally facilitate the scattering of seeds in 
that direction, and during the first year or two, before the weeds and 
brush began to crowd them out, they would germinate freely in the 
open ground. I had simply overlooked them on my former visit, 
for the reason that they were hidden in the jungle, where, after 
making a successful start in life during the palmy days before their 
little Belgium was overrun by the horde of weedy invaders, they 
were at last overpowered by numbers and buried out of sight. 
Deprived of the sunshine so necessary to this sun-loving race, 
all save the oldest and strongest among them must have perished but 
for the timely intervention of their powerful ally, the fire, which 
swept away all rivals and left the young longleafs in undisputed 
possession of the soil. That such was the case, we have their own 
direct testimony, for every one of them bore unmistakable marks 
of fire. Some were so scorched and blackened that any one un- 
acquainted with the habit of the species would unhesitatingly 
have pronounced them dead. An examination, however, of a 
number of the worst injured plants showed that in not a single 
instance had the growing point been killed, or even seriously 
damaged. 
On the other side of the ravine conditions were unchanged 
except that a new road had been cut around the knoll since my 
former visit, almost completely encircling it, and one of the adult 
pines that stood in their way had been felled by the road builders. 
