170 



The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 



Longleaf 

 Seedlings 

 Survive Fire 



few, and in the unfenced tract there is not one — a complete de- 

 struction of the seed crop. 



"Experiments have been made of burning over tracts by 

 setting fire to the sedge grass that grows very heavily on the 

 preserve. It makes a very hot fire, but from actual count from 

 50 toi 90 per cent of the long-leaf seedlings survived the con- 

 flagration, and in a few days the buds put forth new green 

 straw, and they are healthy! and vigorous today. The fire would 

 burn off the seedlings' straw close to the ground, but the bud is 

 evidently green enough to survive the scorching, and a two or 

 three-year-old seedling will survive the fire much better than the 

 year-old ones. 



"Mr. Hardtner and I are convinced that reforestation of 

 long-leaf is impossible where the hog roams at large rooting up 

 the seedlings; we are convinced that fire does not do as much 

 damage as was thought, but notwithstanding all this we are op- 

 posed to fire at any timie and do not advocate its use. If forest 

 areas are to be burned over to remove dried grasses, let it be 

 done in the proper season — the winter following a rain that has 

 soaked the ground. Very little damage will be done then. 



"We have long advocated the leaving of one or more seed 

 trees to an acre when the lumberman fells the timber for his 

 sawmills. This is truly a method of conservation, and if ad- 

 hered to by lumbermen will soon have the cut-over area re- 

 forested with seedlings. If these seedlings are properly pro- 

 tected and the young trees thinned as they grow, the forest that 

 will take the place of the original will yield even richer returns 

 in from fifty to sixty years. 



"If this method of reforestation is carried out, in forty years 

 one .may expect to have a good stand of timber on forest lands, 

 hardly ready for the millman's saw, but good thriving trees 

 ready for lumbering during the next ten to twenty years thereafter. 

 "At Urania it is being demonstrated that it is just as easy 

 to grow 50,000 feet of timber to the acre in sixty years by as- 

 sisting nature as it is for unaided nature to produce 5,000 feet 

 Profits in Re- ^^ ^^^ same period. And thinning does not mean endless ex- 

 forestation ' pense for the tree farmer, for Ave havei demonstrated on the State 

 Forest Reserve, using a 21-acre plot of short-leaf and loblolly, 

 that proper thinning gave 180 cords of wood, 555 tram ties, and 

 200 posts worth $258.75 at a laboring cost of $205.00, a profit of 



