54 BTTLLETIX 1061, U. S. DEPABTMEXT OF AGEICULTI T EE 
curred in several years, in order to secure pine reproduction, many 
people believe that it may be adAusable to burn over the land in the 
winter preceding the fall in which a good seed crop is anticipated. 
This will allow the seed to reach the soil. Protection against fire 
should thereafter be afforded. In the absence of good seed trees, at 
least an average of one to each acre, artificial methods of seed-sow- 
ing or the planting of seedlings must, obviously, be employed. 
PROTECTION 
PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE 
Every informed and right-thinking person knows that the stop- 
ping of forest fires is the first step in the reproduction of forests. 
Fires in the woods have lost to the South a rich heritage amounting 
to many hundreds of millions of dollars. If the lumbermen had 
already cut every stick of the original-growth pine, but, if from the 
start, fires had been kept down, the South would undoubtedly be far 
richer in timber than it is to-day. At best, few fires probably would 
have occurred, and some probably always will occur. Public senti- 
ment in the South will some day reach the point where fires, so far 
as humanly possible, will be eliminated: those which do start will 
be attacked and brought under control, and the great area of natural 
forest land will be brought into productiveness. 
A vast amount of young longleaf pine is killed or seriously injured 
by fire every year. The first-year seedling is very susceptible to fire. 
The growing sapling is always set back or stunted when robbed of 
its tuft of foliage, and, as the result of repeated attacks, it weakens 
and dies. The few saplings that succeed in the struggle and reach 
pole size are usually worked early for turpentine, and within a 
period of five years thereafter most of them become a complete loss 
as a result of burning and the subsequent attacks of insects and dis- 
eases or of windfall. 
The power of longleaf pine to withstand the effect of fire is 
remarkable. It is very likely that this exceptional adaptation has 
given the species the popular reputation of being completely immune 
from fire, and even of "thriving on fires " (PL XV). The fact that 
many longleaf saplings survive an ordinary fire is no adequate rea- 
son for implying that longleaf is immune and suffers no injury 
from fire. Every fire, with probably few exceptions, takes its toil 
in the death of a greater or less number of trees, and in addition 
causes much injury to practically all the others (PL XVI). The 
degree of injury varies widely with the size of the tree, season of the 
year, amount and dryness of the inflammable material, and velocity 
of the wind. Through fire promising young stands have been 
repeatedly wiped out from the same tract of cut-over land. A few 
stragglers can usually be found, giving a clue to the successive 
young stands that at various times have provided the land with the 
making of a forest and have been destroyed through the action of 
repeated fires. 
If fire burns 1 or 2 year old seedlings, they are usually killed. 
A quick grass fire under a stiff breeze, however, passes so rapidly 
that many 1-year-old seedlings may survive. If fires burn in sum- 
mer or fall during dry weather, longleaf seedlings up to 8 years 
