524 ) Causes of Forest Rotation, ; [June, 
with warm but not hot sunshine. The trees bore a bountiful crop 
of seed last May, and of the first that matured and fell, I tried to 
sprout about a dozen by placing them in good ground and water- 
z ing every day for several days. But as I could not give them all 
my time, they dried up between waterings and died. After these 
had died, there came a threatening, blustering storm one Sunday 
a evening about sundown, which shook off the remaining soft maple 
seeds. They were so abundant that they gave the streets a buff color 
J where they fell. The wind was followed by a light, steady rain, which 
= continued several days, alternating with sunshine. This was favora- 
ble to sprouting these seeds, and they came up all over the streets, 
yards, and gardens as thick as weeds in a neglected field, a thing 
that never happened before in the twenty-two years I have resided 
in the place. Those in the street the cows ate up ; those in the gar- 
dens were weeded out, and those growing elsewhere were killed 
by the following summer drought. On the south end of my gar- 
den, where a cellar drain terminates, the proper moisture was 
` maintained through the drought, and there stands a thick cluster 
of them, the only survivors, so far as I know, of the millions that 
sprang up last May. After these trees are three years old they 
can be successfully transplanted into any kind of soil we have 
et here, and seem as hardy as any dry-ground tree ; but during their 
infancy the conditions must be as before stated or they die. So 
= thinkitis clear that this tree will never. be self-planting, except 
- along the low, moist bottom of the streams where we find it 
native. 
A The hard sugar maple does plant its own seeds within the 
radius of its own leaf-fall. In 1884 there developed a local rain 
in the south-east quarter of this (Parke) county which continued 
_ showery for several days, alternating with sunshine, just as the 
~ sugar maple seeds were falling. The result was as in the case of 
the soft maples last May; all the seeds sprouted. As this favor- 
able condition did not happen when the other trees were shedding 
their seeds, the result in that part of the county is, that the sugar 
= maples are a hundred to one of all the other young trees sisi 
: bined, and the deep snow and cold winter that followed, making 
-a hard crust on the snow, prevented the sheep, cattle and rabbits : 
: (hares) from browsing them down, though it starved thousands 
‘of rabbits, as their bones found in hollow logs and trees abun- 
dantly attest; but it saved the young sugar maples till they a*° 
