iieieNe G1) AsUrD-U BO N: S°O-CG:1 ET Y 5 
In writing the story of forestry in Illinois, a consideration 
of lumbering in the state is of prime importance. Suppose we 
take first the timber in the southern hills, which at one time in 
the ravines contained a considerable percentage of white oak, 
tulip (yellow poplar), beech and maple. The evolution has been 
something like this: The small portable mill went in, cutting 
up the best of the oak and tulip and leaving the beech. During 
the past few years the beech has become valuable as a tie timber 
through the perfecting of the process of wood preservation, so 
that most of the product of these small portable mills has been 
beech railway ties or beech car stock. With the change in 
moisture conditions due to cutting out the beech, which is a 
shade-loving tree, more light has been admitted to the forest, 
and the black oaks and hickory have become the dominant 
trees in the stand. 
At this stage the tie-maker enters the game, taking out 
the remaining white oak and the best of the black oak for rail- 
road ties; and there follows him the mine-prop operator, whe 
takes out the smaller trees for mine-props, legs and motor ties, 
the latter surfaced on only two faces. If fire is kept out of the 
forest, we will have another crop of timber, mostly white oak, 
black oak and hickory. If not, we will have conditions similar 
to those described in Forestry Circular No. 2 of the Natural 
History Survey, when fire takes its toll of mature trees and 
kills young growth of seedling and sprout origin. The ground, 
as in certain parts of the east, does not seem to be baked by 
these repeated fires, although the nitrogenous matter it form- 
erly contained must be partly burned out and its water-holding 

Photo by R. B. Miller 
HAULING LOGS TO THE MILL 
capacity in these hills greatly lessened by the destruction of 
leaf litter and humus. Our foresters in southern Illinois have 
