PROTECTION OF YOUNG PINES AGAINST FIRES AND HOGS. 61 



use on these lands ad libitum. It is the opposition of these people, 

 who constitute so large a part of the voters, that has prevented in 

 several of these eastern counties the adoption of a general law for 

 confining cattle and stock. As timber for fencing material and 

 other purposes becomes scarcer, the more intelligent citizens are 

 coming to see clearly enough the imperative need of such a change, 

 both in our laws and in public opinion, as will suffice to protect 

 the young forest growth 'from fires and stock, and thus to give the 

 valuable forest trees an opportunity to propagate themselves. 



NECESSARY PROTECTION OF YOUNG PINES AGAINST FIRES AND HOGS. 



Without a thorough cessation of fires and an equally thorough 

 exclusion of stoQk, at least until the trees are thickly started and 

 well grown, say until 10 feet high, any effort to produce a uniform 

 growth would be futile. Once that a new growth has secured 

 a firm foothold and has formed a dense covering, the very thick- 

 ness of it, by its exclusion of most low growth and grass, will be 

 preventive of fires, since the thin covering of pine straw and 

 humus will not carry fire except in very dry seasons or before a 

 heavy wind. The exclusion of swine is a measure which must be 

 absolutely enforced until the trees have reached a diameter of 

 3 or 4 inches. (See, also, page 57). 



The following statements will show what an important part fires 

 play in the destruction of pine seedlings: 



In the fall of 1892 there was a very full long-leaf pine mast, 

 and in the following spring seedlings could be seen by thousands. 

 In moderately dense long-leaf pine forests in Montgomery county, 

 where there was about one-half as many of those pines standing 

 as when it was in a virgin state, these pines being mixed with a 

 few post and black-jack oaks and the rest of the land open, -there 

 w^ere from 15 seedlings to the square yard in the open to 35 seed- 

 lings on an equal area beneath some of the trees. A space which 

 was staked off' and noted was examined again in the fall after a 

 fire had passed over it and then it did not average one seedling to 

 the square yard.' The soil here w^as a salmon-colored loam and 

 the grass largely broom-straw (Andropogon Virginicus). 



Another tract, which was on the sand-hills of the western section 



