62 



FORESTS, FOREST LANDS y^ND FOREST PRODUCTS. 



of Cumberland county, was examined shortly after it had been 

 lumbered. This was not seen in the spring, but when visited in 

 the fall sliowed by the great number and position of the cones that 

 seed must have fallen abundantly over most of the ground which 

 had since been burnt over. It was hard to find, however, a seed- 

 ling which had escaped the flames. 



Another place examined was in Bladen county, on a sandy loam 

 soil. There were in the spring of 1893 uumerous seedling pines 

 there. A later examination in the fall showed a large number 

 still growing, but no fire had passed over them and the roots were 

 not yet large enough for the hogs to root up. A small portion of 

 this last tract has been fenced off and the progress of the seedlings 

 in the enclosure, and those outside, will be compared and the 

 requirements and peculiarities of the young plants studied as they 

 develop. 



If it had been possible, immediately after the falling of this 

 mast of 1892, to put the long-leaf pine lands, or at least those 

 parts which are most sandy, and have only a thin cover of pines, 

 or the large areas recently lumbered, under some management 

 which would have given protection to the seed and later to the 

 young pines, in ten years with continued protection there would 

 have been over the larger part of this area a thicket of pines large 

 enough to have been self-protecting in a great measure, and in a 

 fair way to become trees suitable for lumber and for yielding sup- 

 plies of turpentine. 



At the date of this writing it is a safe statement to make that 

 there have been already destroyed over nine-tenths of the pines 

 which sprung up so abundantly less than two years ago. The 

 time which will elapse before another large mast is of course 

 uncertain. Smaller masts should occur, however, in three or four 

 years. Last ^^ear (1893) there was none. An examination of the 

 pines shows that there will be very little this fall. The freeze in 

 April of this year (1894) destroyed the pollen of the trees along 

 the western part of the pine belt, but as they have not been exam- 

 ined further east it is uncertain whether it was destroyed there also. 



There will consequently be little pine mast in 1895, at least in 



