FOREST EXTENSION. oil 
Creek, in Russell County, and here also the reproduction is good, 
though necessarily limited. 
HOW FOREST EXTENSION IS BROUGHT ABOUT. 
> . 
The steps by which forestation begins are often apparently insig- 
nificant and unobserved. On the streams, the sand-bar willow (Salix 
fluviatilis) and the false indigo (Amerpha fruticosa) play an im- 
portant part. Their roots hold the banks and bars from shifting 
until tree species can get a foothold. The sand-bar willow is par- 
ticularly well adapted to this end. Its roots spread many feet Just 
beneath the surface of the sand, and a new shoot is produced every 
few inches. After the sand is fixed and other species started the 
willow dies, but its mission has been fulfilled. Its seed is carried 
by the water as well as the wind, so that the same flood which makes 
a sand bar often seeds it to the tree which will redeem it. 
In heavier soils, other shrubs are forest forerunners. The smooth 
sumac (hus glabra), the wolfberry (Symphoricarpos occidentalis), 
and the wild plum (Prunus americana) are among the species which 
grow in clumps and are able to win in the fight against grass.  Favor- 
able conditions for the germination of tree seeds are thus created, 
while the shrubbery protects the young seedlings until they are of 
considerable size. 
The one thing which, above all others, makes for improved condi- 
tions on the plains, and gives assured hopes tor better tree growth in 
the future than in the past, 1s the cessation of fires. Before the 
country was settled, fires were both frequent and extensive. Whether 
originating from some neglected camp fire, a flash of hghtning, or 
set by the Indians, they swept over vast areas unchecked and left noth- 
ing but a barren waste behind. Only the trees along the streams could 
survive, and, at best, make a stunted, scrubby growth. Reproduc- 
tion was extremely uncertain, owing to the repeated destruction of the 
small seedlings, and grass gained the ascendency over all other forms 
of vegetation. 
With the nearly complete stoppage of fires since the country has 
been permanently settled, conditions are greatly improved. It is a 
matter of common knowledge among the stockmen of western Kansas 
and western Nebraska that the grasses are changing with noticeable 
rapidity, and that the species common in the eastern part of both 
States are working their way westward. The writer has in mind 
specific tracts of land in western Kansas on which, in less than twenty 
years, the predominating grass has changed from the “ buffalo grass ” 
of the arid plains to the “ blue stem ” of farther east. It is perfectly 
safe to assume that a change in conditions so radical as this is favor- 
able to forest extension. Several tree species have succeeded, under 
the most adverse circumstances, in forcing their way into the very 
