REPRODUCTION OF RED CEDAR. 19 
length of 12 feet and a height of 40 feet. It is comparatively healthy 
and is still growing slowly. Another cedar in Banner County, about 
7 miles northwest of Ashford, has a diameter breasthigh of 4.8 feet 
and a height of 35 feet, avith only 8 feet of clear length. In general, 
measurements made of individual trees in various localities indicate 
a fair rate of growth. 
There is much less red cedar along Pine Ridge than south of the 
North Platte. In Sioux County, for instance, very few living trees 
are found, though there are some old, decaying trees on the steep 
sides of the canyons. The early settlers say that the cedar was for- 
merly more abundant, but cutting has been so close that very few 
good trees are left. Cedar was once very plentiful in the canyons 
along the Niobrara River, and at present there are excellent stands 
of young trees in many places which, if protected, will develop into 
valuable timber. 
REPRODUCTION OF THE RED CEDAR. 
- Where seed trees exist the reproduction of the red cedar is generally 
good, and not rarely the number of young cedar seedlings is rela= 
tively much larger than that of the pine, and they are of all ages. 
This may be accounted for by the facts that the cedar is a prolific 
seed bearer, and that its seed years are much more frequent than those 
of the pine. It is also to be observed that where all the well-devel- 
oped cedar trees have been cut, old, scrubby, half-dead veterans are 
often left, which bear seed abundantly. The young growth seems 
to be uniformly in a healthy condition, and sometimes forms very. 
dense stands. In a Banner County canyon a plat 8 by 43 feet con- 
tained 206 trees from 18 inches to 10 feet high—a rate of more than 
~6,000 to the acre. 
There is evidence that in many cases cedar is replacing pine after 
cutting. For example, on an area of 6.16 acres in Muddy Gulch, on 
which 37 pine stumps, averaging 6.4 inches in diameter, and 77 cedar 
stumps, averaging 6.1 inches in diameter, were counted, of growing 
trees 3 inches or more in diameter 177 were pine and 65 cedar, but of 
those less than 8 inches in diameter only 237 were pine, while 1,010 
were cedar. In other words, the proportion of pine to cedar in the 
large trees and stumps combined is about 3 to 2, while in the young 
growth it is less than 1 to 4. One-third of an acre in Banner County 
showed 10 cedar and 13 pine stumps, and 1 large living cedar and 17 
pines, but 192 cedar seedlings to 45 pine seedlings. 
Undoubtedly birds are the principal agency in disseminating the 
cedar seed throughout this region. Underneath one pine tree in 
