16 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
not rare. Trees ten feet thick and 300 feet high have been cut. But 
at present such trees are not common. Even in the forestr-reserve and 
the national park the trees are seldom more than two or three feet in 
diameter and often much less. 
The same statements may be made concerning the second species on 
our list, the Oregon cedar. This tree was always much less common, 
occurred in rich soils, along stream-banks and lake-shores, and in com- 
mercial size is now rare. In fact the big logs are now everywhere lying 
on the ground. These great ruins, like some other time-defying struc- 
tures, seem to last indefinitely. This is particularly true of the cedar; 
logs that have lain perhaps for centuries make lumber and shingles 
to-day equal to the best. I found one spruce log in the national park 
150 feet long, five feet thick inside the bark at base. Throughout the 
park there is more lumber on the ground than in the standing forest, a 
wholly primeval condition ; and the prostrate logs are all gigantic. Tra- 
dition has it that these great firs and cedars were overwhelmed by fire, 
before the advent of the white man; at any rate, the trees that reach 
the mills to-day and those that make up the forest reserve, are not old ; 
many logs carry less than one hundred rings. 
If circumstances are at all favorable, the Douglas spruce is a tree of 
unusually rapid growth. The largest log seen shows in sections less 
than 500 annual rings. This section is about nine feet in diameter inside 
the bark but the growth was mostly made in 350 years. To tree-culture, 
for lumber purposes, no other tree lends itself with such splendid 
promise. 
This of course, suggests the problem of reforestation about Puget 
Sound. The great natural forest that spread from the ocean to Rainier, 
has been almost entirely swept away; largely by lumbering, perhaps as 
largely by fire, following our barbarous lumbering methods. But such 
is the peculiar adaptability of these soils, such the gentle beneficence of 
the rain, and above all, such the wonderful vigor of the species here 
discussed, that, fires once controlled, natural reforestation is almost 
certain over all this vast area. There are some exceptions. Wherever 
the soil can be used for profitable agriculture, reforestation is of course 
prevented. There are, however, evidently many abandoned farms. Even 
in localities where, owing to topographical conditions, ordinary agricul- 
ture is not profitable some men use goats to clean from rock and cliff- 
side every living thing, until the land will no longer maintain even 
goats. Then there are steep mountain slopes on which, for reasons not 
apparent, the fire has been destructive even of the soil; and such “burns” 
are hot speedily recovered. 
