FORESTS OF THE LEVEL PINE WOODLAND. 15T 



they have been killed by fires. The loblolly pine, resisting suc- 

 cessfully the fires and uninjured by cattle, has colonized either 

 by solitary specimens or more frequently by groups of a few trees 

 which have already reached maturity, or by thickets of younger 

 ones, wherever openings in the cover above enabled it to secure a 

 foothold. In sections long-settled, where the long-leaf pine has 

 been culled, and in long-abandoned turpentine orchards the lob- 

 lolly has replaced a great part of the long-leaf pine. The mature 

 loblolly pines nearly equal in height the long-leaf pine and form 

 a part of the cover, beneath which groups of young; trees of the 

 former species can be seen in all stages of development wherever, 

 there is sufficient light to permit their growth. Nowhere except 

 in the limited districts protected from fire and cattle, is there any 

 young growth of the long-leaf pine. This tree, once dominant 

 over such an extensive area, is surely failing to reproduce itself, 

 and it is fortunate that a tree as valuable as the loblolly pine is 

 supplanting it on these soils. The greater part of the compact 

 loblolly growth to the south of the Tar river-has in this manner 

 gradually extended by occupying the lands from which the 

 progeny of its closest competitor has been thus excluded by the 

 influence of human agencies. 



To the causes which have checked the growth of the long-leaf 

 pine on the pine barrens, fires, hogs and infrequent seeding, there 

 must be added another agency which has aided in suppressing it 

 on the level loamy soils — the struggle with contesting species. As. 

 the cover in the long-leaf pine growth has been broken, either by 

 trees being removed in lumbering or windfalls, seed from the lob- 

 lolly pines in the swamps and along the streams have been blown 

 in, this pine seeding more regularly than the long-leaf, and its 

 seedlings have taken possession, the young plant not being 

 destroyed by hogs, and by their rapid growth soon getting too 

 large to be easily damaged by fires. Long-leaf pines, which after- 

 a time might have succeeded in getting a start, have thus been 

 crowded out by being overshaded by the more rapid-growing 

 loblolly pine. Under existing conditions it is impossible for the 

 long-leaf pine to ever again succeed naturally in forming a growth 



