PRESENT CONDITIONS. 
13 
body of pine occurred and has been removed. On the lighter, 
gravelly loam and sandy loam soils, where the pine formed a 
heavier admixture, the remaining hemlock and hardwoods are 
badly damaged and often entirely killed over extensive tracts. 
(Parts of Price, Chippewa, Sawyer, Washburn counties.) In 
most of the pinery areas proper, the repeated fires have largely 
cleared the lands of all the heavier debris in slashings. (Oneida, 
Marinette, Washburn counties, near Lake Superior at Ashland 
and Bayfield and in Douglas counties.) Here are large tracts of 
bare wastes, “stump prairies,” where the ground is sparsely cov¬ 
ered with weeds and grass, sweet fern, and a few scattering 
runty bushes of scrub oak, aspen, and white birch. These al¬ 
ternate with thickets of small pine (often jack pine) which in 
spite of repeated fires have escaped destruction or have re-estab¬ 
lished themselves. Hor have these changes beeen restricted to 
the upland forests. The swamps, too, of every county have suf¬ 
fered from fires. Some of the worst forest fires have started in 
the dense tamarack and cedar swamps of the sandy areas, where 
the most complete destruction has taken place. (Oneida, Price, 
Chippewa, Marinette counties.) 
In the accompanying map an attempt is made to show the 
present forest conditions as well as to give some notion of the 
former extent and character of these woods. The areas of pin¬ 
ery proper, distinguished by red color, represent the pine forests 
of almost pure growth, without merchantable hardwoods and 
hemlock, covering the sandy districts of this region. The island 
tracts of mixed forest on heavier soil are not shown and in the 
same way the numerous small tracts of regular pinery scattered 
through the great body of mixed forest, particularly along the 
rivers, were left out for sake of clearness and partly because 
their exact limits were not ascertained. The hardwood mixed 
forest, distinguished by green color in three shades, to indicate 
differences of density or yield, is divided by a red line into two 
parts, the hemlock and birch area on the north and east of this 
line and the oak woods west and south. 
The existence of pine is indicated by red signs, the plus sign 
