30 AB8AR0KA DIVISION OF YELLOWSTONE E'OREST EESEEVE. 



continue to occupy the ground until, in the process of natural pruning and 

 thinning, the more valuable and less tolerant red fir and spruce succeed in 

 reestablishing themselv^es. 



Openings made by fire are always more favorable to a larger per cent of lodge- 

 pole pine in the restockage than. is the case where cutting has thinned or destroyed 

 the stands. The cause for this is principally the destruction of the cover in the 

 fopmer case and its conservation in the; latter, affording a proper germinating layer 

 or seed bed for the seeds of the red fir and spruce, which in this region apparently 

 need some such cover. Where fire destroys a restockage growing on a tract burned 

 over fifteen or twenty years previously, some , changes occur in the soil extremely 

 inimical to any Subsequent reforestation. Tracts of this sort are likely to become 

 brush covered, and a decade or two may pass before forest growth again appears on 

 them.' Burns of this sort occur in the northwest and northeast quarters of the 

 area. The common brush growth in such cases is composed of Ceanothus veluti- 

 nus and Shepherdia canadensis: 



Reproduction in the woodland areas is slow and sparse as a rule. The heavy 

 grass cover more or less prevents germination of seeds of the coniferous trees com- 

 posing the stands, and none of these species is at all prolific in seed production in this 

 region. Exceptions to the general scarcity of seedling and sapling growth in the 

 woodlands occur in T. 7 S., E,. 18 E. Here tracts, formerly grass covered and 

 aggregating 9,000 or 10,000 acres, have within the last thirty or thirty-five years 

 been transformed from woodland to forest, with close-set stands of lodgepole pine 

 and aspen, which have spread out from the forested mountain region in the township 

 adjoining on the south. 



TOWNSHIP DESCRIPTIONS. 



in the absaroka division. 

 Township 2 South, Range 14 East. 



Topography. — The central and eastern portions of this township comprise masses 

 of very steep and broken ridges, with an altitudinal range between the 5,000-foot 

 and the 6,000-foot contours. In the extreme northern and in the western areas 

 the ridges sink into a rolling foothill, country intersected by numerous shallow 

 ravines. The township forms the extreme northern end of the Yellowstone Forest 

 Reserve, and its system of ridges and spurs represent the northern termination 

 of the great mountain masses which constitute the eastern portion of the Boulder 

 drainage in the central areas of the Absaroka division. 



Mining. — N one. 



Soil. — Here and there in the valleys the spil is a gravelly loam. In some places 

 it' consists of clay and gumbo. 



