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Sierra Club Bulletin. 



clearing the land has been taken. The rest of the work 

 would be easy, if the stumps of the pines were all that 

 had to be reckoned with. No second-growth timber is 

 permitted to exceed eighteen inches in diameter, and 

 stumps of such strength rot out in from three to four years 

 at most. But meanwhile a new crop has grown up 

 amongst them. As if under a magic spell, millions of 

 seedlings of chaparral and manzanita appear. Whence the 

 seeds came nobody has yet explained. Perhaps they had 

 been lying dormant since the majestic timber first shel- 

 tered plants of their kind; perhaps wind and birds and 

 animals have scattered them for all these years from ad- 

 joining hills, and heretofore the thick cover of pine 

 needles made sprouting impossible. It is a fact that the 

 fire seems to have liberated their latent lives, and now 

 no seed-bed of a nurseryman could be planted closer 

 than these burned-over districts. But a danger arises 

 from this growth when the ground is covered with the 

 thickest stand of young pines imaginable. They cannot 

 increase in size and girth, as they rob each other of light 

 and air. If a cow strays into their shelter, the hunting 

 herder has to dismount ere he can follow her, and that 

 means much in a country where every boy grows up a 

 woodsman and a horseman. This tract of pines was con- 

 sidered a nuisance, and the entire neighborhood was 

 glad when fire " got into it." It is reported to have 

 been the hottest blaze ever known in that part of the 

 mountains, and nobody would ever have thought it pos- 

 sible that a tree or a shrub could withstand such hellish 

 breath. Yet a tree here and there survived the waste, 

 and if only ax and fire would spare them they could 

 reach maturity and spread seed from their opening cones. 



