Oct. i, 1917 Reproduction from Seed Stored in the Forest Floor 
7 
on the southwest transect, where the young growth of the older classes 
is very heavy along the north slope of Bear Creek Canyon at a distance 
of more than a mile from the nearest Douglas fir timber. The occurrence 
in this locality of a small group of living trees (noble fir) demonstrates 
the abatement of the fire as a feature coincident with the subsequent 
occurrence of dense reproduction. The importance of the relation 
between the severity of the fire and the amount of subsequent reproduc¬ 
tion is developed later. As the transect approaches the timber at the 
top of the ridge, older seedlings are again very scattered, and it is only 
very close to the edge of the timber that the younger seedlings begin to 
appear at all. This peculiar distribution of the reproduction can be 
observed on all of the transects, and shows very definitely that the 
green timber remaining after the fire has had very little influence on the 
general occurrence of the Douglas fir reproduction over the burn. 
Nobi^ fir. —The noble-fir records for the section bring out the same 
points as the Douglas fir records, but in a more striking way because 
the site was more suited to noble fir than to Douglas fir. It is noticeable 
that the reproduction of this species is distributed in good stands with 
remarkable uniformity over most of the section, in spite of the fact 
that there are two well-defined groups of seed trees within the section. 
One departure from this uniformity is the scarcity of seedlings on the 
high south and east slopes of Lookout Mountain, which is undoubtedly 
due to the dryness of the site and the direction of the fire. On the west 
and south slope of the mountain extremely dense stands occur, amount¬ 
ing in several places to 20,000 or 30,000 seedlings per acre. 
There is another departure from the uniformity of the noble-fir repro¬ 
duction which is inconspicuous but very significant. This is the restricted 
distribution of the age class o to 5 years, which is limited either to the 
proximity of the groups of seed trees or to favorable situations downhill 
from these trees. Even in such places the young class forms only a 
small percentage of the total reproduction, and decreases rapidly with 
the increase in distance from the seed trees. These facts can not be 
construed otherwise than to indicate that the seed-tree groups are not 
casting their seed for any great distance, in most cases only from 2 to 
5 chains. 
On the other hand, the older classes, especially the 11-year class, 
occur at distances of from 10 to 50 chains from the groups of seed trees. 
Over the whole section almost 94 per cent of all noble-fir reproduction 
started the first year following the fire, less than 4 per cent in the next 
five years following the fire, and only 2.5 per cent later than six years, 
most of this latter being within 5 chains of seed trees (Table II). 
The township study shows that noble fir occurs on all of the areas 
on which it grew before the fire. Some parts of the bum are below 
the noble-fir zone, and for that reason do not show any noble-fir repro¬ 
duction. Wherever the species does occur in the township, it was 
