6-80 BULLETIN 820, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
insects and fungi, the subject of fire protection is of prime importance 
in management. Reasonable assurance of protection is necessary 
before any expense in planting or management is warranted. To be 
adequate, the plan for fire protection should include provisions for 
patrol during the seasons when fire is a menace, the establishment 
and maintenance of fire lanes, the disposition of the slash resulting 
from thinnings or logging, and, on large tracts, lookouts and tele- 
phones. (See Pls. XIII and XIV.) An accumulation of logging 
slash is a menace to any live timber near it, not only because of its 
inflammability, but also because it may harbor destructive insects. 
Brush may best be disposed of by burning. Cutting in the fall and 
winter and burning the slash in piles as the logging proceeds is an 
effective preventive of insect infestation. Fire lanes, properly laid 
out, could be used in many cases as a means of dividing the forest 
into cutting series or blocks for utilization purposes and these lands 
would make one block accessible without slashing into another 
adjacent to it. 
Danger from windfall may be lessened by cutting first on the lee 
side and proceeding in the direction from which the prevailing winds 
blow. In this way the imterior of the stand is not opened to the 
sweep of the wind. Also, a short rotation will involve less windfall 
than a long one. 
NATURAL REPRODUCTION. 
The cutting of jack pine stands to encourage natural reproduc- 
tion of the species may be accomplished in either one of two ways. 
The first method is that of clean cutting the mature stand either in 
strips or patches 100 yards or less in width. Reproduction would 
then take place from seed already on the ground or blown from the 
adjacent woods. The second method is that of a general clean cut- 
ting, leaving only from 5 to 10 scattered seed trees to the acre or, 
preferably, 2 or 3 groups of from 3 to 5 trees each. (See Pl. 1X.) 
To make sure of getting jack pine reproduction on the National 
Forests in northern Minnesota, it is sometimes considered necessary 
to lop the tops of the trees that have been cut and scatter the brush, 
which is burned in the spring as soon as itis dry enough. This causes 
cones on the ground to open and let out their seed. Also, the seed- 
bed is prepared by the partial exposure of the mineral soil. On 
shallow soils with rock near the surface, brush should be burned in 
winter while snow is on the ground, so that the soi! covering will not 
be disturbed. Fires should always be carefully controlled and be 
kept away from seed trees and adjacent timber Where overstock- 
ing of jack pine results, as is common after fires, the stand may be 
thinned out at a minimum expense within the first five years after 
the reproduction takes place. Natural reproduction and thinning 
would be less expensive than planting. 
