FOREST PLANTATIONS AT BILTMORE, N. C. 29 



shorter trees 85 per cent of the white and only 4 per cent of the short- 

 leaf pines were left. As jret the white pines have not made sufficient 

 growth to justify the advantage given them. The procedure has, 

 however, proved fortunate in another way; for when a bark-beetle 

 attack killed several of the shortleaf pines, the smaller white pines 

 were in readiness to fill up the blanks caused by the death of the 

 larger trees. The thinned and control plots have an area of 0.1 acre 

 each. 



The plot of mixed pine and maple was put in in one of the 20-year- 

 old Apiary stands, and here the maples were growing so well that it 

 seemed worth while to encourage maple at the expense of all but a 

 very few of the best pines. Most of the pines were, in fact, suffering 

 from the competition of the maples. In 1916, 52 per cent of the living- 

 trees were cut ; in 1 923 , 25 per cent. (PI. 11.) As the area of this stand 

 is only 0.4 acre, the sample plots had to be very small — one-twentieth 

 of an acre for the thinned plot and one-thirtieth for the control. 



THE PLANTATIONS AS A GUIDE TO FUTURE PLANTING 



Although many of the details of planting and much of the subse- 

 quent history of the resulting stands are unrecorded or have been 

 obscured by time, certain conclusions are obvious from a study of the 

 present plantations and available records. 



Evidence points very clearly, for example, to the unwisdom, in 

 replanting old fields, of selecting a species merely because of its 

 prevalence in the virgin forest of the region. Schenck's efforts to 

 reestablish hardwoods on the old fields that he planted did not take 

 into consideration the changes in the soil and other environmental 

 conditions which the removal of the forest, the farming of the land, 

 and its subsequent abandonment had involved. It was because of 

 this that the few individual trees left from the original forest proved, 

 misleading indicators of the species that would do best under the 

 conditions obtaining at the time of planting. 



The Biltmore plantations clearly demonstrate the suitability of 

 northern white pine for planting in this region and also the desir- 

 ability of planting the native yellow pines in mixed stands. Of the 

 hardwoods that have survived, sugar maple is the best and oaks 

 second. Oak as an understory of pine can evidently be counted 

 upon to persist and to step readily into tbe place of the pines when 

 these are removed. Of the exotic species tried at Biltmore, Norway 

 spruce has given the best results. 



Clearly, the close planting favored b} r Schenck and others of that 

 period is not justified unless it is followed up with systematic thin- 

 nings. The results of the experimental thinnings made b} r the 

 Forest Service afford convincing evidence of the value of silvicuj- 

 tural thinnings in all plantations of such closely spaced trees. 



