RESTOCKING.' 
51 
undesirable pasture lands, difficult to clear and still largely too 
good to be restocked with timber, which in such places would 
require considerable labor and expense. 
6. Where the heavy hardwoods and hemlock predominated 
and the pine was a mere scattered admixture, the ground and 
litter are usually damp, and fires run only during exceptionally 
dry seasons (as in 1894). The removal of the pine from these 
areas is not followed by fire; the lands are left densely timbered, 
so that they hardly seem to deserve the appellation of cut-over 
lands. Nevertheless, even in these forests fires have run, never 
far, to be sure, but still strips five miles and more in length are 
seen, where the fire has left a dense, heavy cover of dead and 
dying, scorched and charred trees of all kinds. Fortunately 
these tracts are not very numerous; their only hope lies in clear¬ 
ing them for farm purposes, for which nearly all of this heavier 
land is eminently well suited. 
Restocking .—What may be done to restock the land will vary 
from place to place, according as the land is well under way to 
reclothe itself, or is a bare waste, or is a tangle of debris or cov¬ 
ered .with worthless thickets of fire damaged woods. This work 
may be done at once or by piecemeal, it may be done thoroughly 
or roughly, it may assist nature to a small or large degree. 
Where scattered saplings and defective trees have been left in 
logging and have survived the fires, these trees continue to seed 
the ground, around each of them a little crop of seedlings springs 
up after good seed years (every 3 to 5 years), and, if protected, 
these grow and in about 20 years, by the time the mother trees 
are gone, bear seed themselves and then really the process of 
restocking begins. Thus much valuable time is lost and the 
ground remains exposed too long to wind and sun and is thereby 
reduced in its fertility. 
In many districts seed trees are wanting; repeated fires have 
killed both mother tree and seedlings, and nature must be as¬ 
sisted if anything is to be accomplished in reasonable time. In 
most sandy pinery lands where the fires have made a clean sweep, 
the work does not require much preparation, and a very cheap 
