118 HARPER 



palustris and P. Elliottii now standing in South Georgia have 

 been bled by them. Under the common system of turpentining 

 (since 1902 being slowly superseded by an improved system 

 invented by Dr. C. H. Herty) , each tree is usually worked only 

 three years, and the operators try to get as much as possible out 

 of it in that length of time, without any regard for the future. 

 After the turpentine men are through with the trees (or even 

 before), many of them are blown over by the wind or destroyed 

 by fire. The improved system greatly prolongs the life of the 

 tree and lessens the danger from wind and fire, but it came too 

 late to save many of the present generation of pines in Georgia. 1 



The stock-raisers, with their thousands of cattle and sheep 

 which roam through the pine forests almost as freely as on the 

 western plains, living principally on wire-grass, contribute to the 

 destruction of the forests in two ways, grazing and burning. 

 Grazing alone seems to do little if any damage to the pine forests. 

 But the fires which are (and have been for several centuries, it is 

 said) started every winter or spring in order to burn off the dead 

 leaves of the wire-grass so that the cattle can more readily get at 

 the new growth, are a more serious matter. These fires (plate 

 XVIII, fig. 2.) are of course mostly confined to the dry pine- 

 barrens, but in very dry weather they may burn well down toward 

 the swamps and even through cypress ponds. On sand-hills 

 there is practically no grass to burn, and the dead leaves probably 

 do not accumulate there fast enough to allow of a fire every year. 



Too frequent fires, although they seem to do no harm to 

 the mature and sound pine trees (which are unfortunately 

 rare now) , prevent the young ones from getting a start and play 

 havoc with those that have been turpentined. Opinions differ 

 as to the effect of annual fires on the herbaceous vegetation, but 

 it seems to me that the damage done must be comparatively slight. 

 The whole dry pine-barren flora seems adapted to stand occa- 

 sional fires, which must have often been started by lightning even 

 before the earth was inhabited by man. Even if fire were kept 



1 The relative merits of the different systems of turpentining are fully- 

 discussed and illustrated by Dr. Herty in Bulletin 40 of the Bureau of 

 Forestry, U. S. Dept. Agriculture. His field experiments were all carried 

 on in the Altamaha Grit region. 



