20 FORESTS OF WISCONSIN. 



among the aspen. But these pines require about five years be- 

 fore they are a foot high and so, even though numbering 500- 

 600 per acre, they escape for years the notice of most people. 

 Before long, however, the gray of the aspen thicket changes to a 

 mixture of gray and green, and in a few more years the aspen 

 grove is transformed into a pine thicket with the aspens feebly 

 struggling or dying out. There are many of these groves of 

 young pine in every county visited; their aggregate area is safely 

 estimated at about 200,000 acres, and they are able to furnish 

 within 50 years' time, if protected, a yield of more than a billion 

 feet of marketable material. But while the ability of white 

 pine to reproduce itself is thus amply demonstrated in every 

 county in North Wisconsin, the fact still remains, that the great 

 body of cut-over pine lands have not and do not at present re- 

 cover themselves with young pine, but that more than 80 per 

 cent, of the bare, burned, cut-over lands are practically devoid 

 of any valuable forest growth whatever. 



EED (NORWAY) PINE. 



The red or N'orway pine occurs in every one of the 27 coun- 

 ties here under consideration, but is abundant only in those 

 which contain sandy districts of greater extent. This pine does 

 not occur on the loam and clay soils, except on the slopes along 

 Lake Superior. It generally grows mixed with white pine on 

 the loamy sands (Oneida, Vilas counties, etc.), and, alone or 

 mixed vrith jack pine, occupies the poorer sands, as the barrens 

 of Bayfield, Marinette counties, etc. The red pine grows quite 

 rapidly when young and up to the age of about 100 years, grow- 

 ing as fast or faster than white pine on the same poor soils. It 

 grows very slowly when old, generally forms a more slender 

 stem than white pine, and does not attain the same dimensions, 

 especially in its diameter. It seeds heavily and reproduces well; 

 it shares in covering pine slashings, forms' dense stands, cleans 

 itself well of limbs, makes a straight, clean stem, is more sound 

 than white pine, and yields very heavily. Originally it formed 

 but a very small part of the entire stand of pine, but today about 



