12 



ately they are reseeding themselves quite well in many places, 

 and with the observance of the most elementary principles of 

 forestry they could be renewed and increased indefinitely. 



The frequent woods fires are still more or less destructive to the 

 young plants, but after close observation for a number of years I 

 am now convinced that the idea expressed by W. W. Ashe in 

 several of his bulletins* that this species is more susceptible to 

 injury by fire than the old-field pine is entirely erroneous. It is 

 true that its growth is so slow that when five years old the bud 

 is usually but a few inches above the ground, but the very dense 

 and abundant protective scales of the bud are wonderfully 

 efficient in keeping out the heat from the delicate growing point. 

 Moreover, the widely spreading mat of long, succulent, mature 

 leaves that rest on the ground prevents the accumulation of 

 inflammable material near the bud and thus greatly reduces 

 the intensity of the heat. Early in the spring of this year, when 

 all buds were dormant, a severe fire ran over the woods between 

 Burnt Bay and Prestwood's Lake. During the first week in June 

 the ground was looked over carefully for evidence on this point. 

 The woods are rather open and a large number of young long- 

 leaf pine had made a start. The mature leaves were killed back 

 almost or entirely to the bud, and were largely burned off, but I 

 could not find a single plant even though only an inch high that 

 was not putting out its fresh young leaves from the unhurt grow- 

 ing point. On the other hand, nearly all of the young plants of 

 the old-field pine were killed, and many of them were four to six 

 feet high. It is, of course, true that year old seedlings of long leaf 

 pine cannot resist hot fires, and the destruction of very young 

 plants in the way is doubtless a great deterrent at present to the 

 reforestation of the sand hills. 



Gifford Pinchot was the first to call attention to the superior 

 adaptations of the long-leaf pine to fire resistance. In the National 

 Geographic Magazine for October, 1899, page 298, he says: 

 "Almost all trees yield readily to slight surface fires during the 

 first ten or fifteen years of their life. To this statement the long- 

 leaf pine is a conspicuous and rare exception. Not only do the 

 young trees protect themselves in early youth by bark which is 



♦See Bulletins N. C. Geol. Survey, No. 5, page 58; No. 6, pages 157-165, 

 and No. 7, page 16. In these bulletins Mr. Ashe gives an excellent discus- 

 sion of the long-leaf pine problem and of the methods necessary to secure 

 the continued propagation of the forests. 



