s. For an old lodge-pole to have on its limbs twenty crops
of unopened cones is not uncommon. Neither is it uncommon to see an
extensive lodge-pole forest each tree of which has upon it several
hundred, and many of the trees a few thousand, cones, and in each cone
a few mature seeds. Most of these seeds will never have a chance to
make a start in life except they be liberated by fire. In fact, most
lodge-pole seeds are liberated by fire. The reproduction of this pine
is so interwoven with the effects of the forest fires that one may
safely say that most of the lodge-pole forests and the increasing
lodge-pole areas are the result of forest fires.

Every lodge-pole forest is a fire-trap. The thin, scaly, pitchy bark
and the live resiny needles on the tree, as well as those on the
ground, are very inflammable, and fires probably sweep a lodge-pole
forest more frequently than any other in America. When this forest
is in a sapling stage, it is very likely to be burned to ashes. If,
however, the trees are beyond the sapling stage, the fire probably
will consume the needles, burn some of the bark away, and leave the
tree, together with its numerous seed-filled cones, unconsumed. As a
rule, the fire so heats the cones that most of them open and release
their seeds a few hours, or a few days, after the fire. If the area
burned over is a large one, the fire loosens the clasp of the
cone-scales and millions of lodge-pole seeds are released to be sown
by the great eternal seed-sower, the wind. These seeds are thickly
scattered, and as they germinate readily in the mineral soil, enormous
numbers of them sprout and begin to struggle for existence. I once
counted 84,322 young trees on an acre.

The trees often stand as thick as wheat in a field and exclude all
other species. Their growth is slow and mostly upright. They early
become delicate miniature poles, and often, at the age of twenty-five
or thirty years, good fishing-poles. In their crowded condition, the
competition is deadly. Hundreds annually perish, but this tree clings
tenaciously to life, and starving it to death is not easy. In the
summer of 1895 I counted 24,271 thirty-year-old lodge-poles upon an
acre. Ten years later, 19,040 of these were alive. It is possible
that eighty thousand, or even one hundred thousand, seedlings started
upon this acre. Sometimes more than half a century is required for
the making of good poles.

On the Grand River in Colorado I once measur