134 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [FEBRUARY 
birch usually has disappeared, and they average on 25 °1™ 2.2 white 
pine, 2.4 black oak, 0.6 white oak. Although the black oak appears 
in slightly greater numbers, the majority of them are suppres and 
white pine dominates the stand. 
Thus it will be seen that the clean-cut areas which pass through 
the white birch stage in their reforestation end in the control of the 
white pine, and that those areas passing through the oak coppice and 
Myrica-Pteris stages are more generally succeeding to white pine 
than to pitch pine. 
SUCCESSION UPON ABANDONED CULTIVATED FIELDS 
The writer had no means of determining definitely how long the 
various fields had been cultivated before abandonment, but the 
indications are that the period was relative y short, on the average 
probably not more than 10 years. In some cases the fields never 
produced any other cultivated crop than rye, while in others they were 
cultivated 30 or 40 years before final abandonment. Occasionally 
an old field partially reforested is cleaned off and a second attempt at 
cultivation is made. 
According to the conditions in which it takes place, the succession 
leading to the dominance of the forest upon abandoned fields may 
be discussed under the following heads: 5 
rt. Succession lacking the preliminary herbaceous stages. This 
occurs when a plowed field near a mature stand of trees happens to 
be abandoned in a heavy seed year. 
2. Succession lacking the sod-forming nes The herbaceous 
stages are present but the complete control of grasses is absent OF 
short-lived. 
3. Succession possessing the sod-forming stage. The natural 
course of succession here is interrupted by man, for these areas are 
cropped for grass or pastured for a longer or shorter period before 
the trees begin to take possession. 
1. SUCCESSION LACKING THE PRELIMINARY HERBACEOUS STAGES. 
This occurs when the abandonment of a plowed field and an abundant 
seed year are in conjunction. For example, a field on the Colchester 
plain first bore a crop of rye, then a crop of beans, and lay fallow 
the third year, when it was seeded down to white birch from the trees 
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