RESTOCKING. 51 



undesirable pasture lands, difficult to clear and still largely too 

 .good to be restocked with timber, wbich in suck places would 

 require considerable labor and expense. 



6. Wbere the heavy hardwoods and hemlock predominated 

 and the pine was a mere scattered admixture, the groimd and 

 litter are usually damp, and fires run only during exceptionally 

 dry seasons (as in 1894). The removal of the pine from these 

 areas ia not followed by fire ; the lands are left densely timbered, 

 so that they hardly seem to deserve the appellation of cut-over 

 lands. Nevertheless, even ia these forests fires have run, never 

 far, to be sure, but still strips five miles and more in length are 

 seen, where the fire has left a dense, heavy cover of dead and 

 dying, scorched and charred trees of all kinds. Fortunately 

 these tracts are not very numerous; their only hope lies in clear- 

 ing them for farm purposes, for which nearly all of this heavier 

 land is eminently well suited. 



Restoclcing. — What may be done to restock the land will vary 

 from place to place, according as the land is well imder way to 

 xeclothe itself, or is a bare waste, or is a tangle of debris or cov- 

 ered with worthless thickets of fire damaged woods. This work 

 may be done at once or by piecemeal, it may be done thoroughly 

 or roughly, it may assist nature to a small or large degree. 

 Where scattered saplings and defective trees have been left in 

 logging and have survived the fires, these trees continue to seed 

 the ground, around each of them a little crop of seedlings springs 

 up after good seed years (every 3 to 5 years), and, if protected, 

 these grow and in about 20 years, by the time the mother trees 

 are gone, bear seed themselves and then really the process of 

 restocking begins. Thus much valuable time is lost and the 

 ground remains exposed too long to wind and sun and is thereby 

 reduced in its fertility. 



In many districts seed trees are wanting; repeated fires have 

 killed both mother tree and seedlings, and nature must be as- 

 ■sisted if anything is to be accomplished in reasonable time. In 

 most sandy pinery lands where the fires have made a clean sweep, 

 "the work does not require much preparation, and a very cheap 



