To grow this tree from seed would require the greatest skill of the
nurseryman, but the burnt land is its paradise. Wherever you see it on
high, dry land you may rest assured that a fire has been there. On
land slides you will not find its seeds germinating, although they
have been deposited there as abundantly as on the burned land.
Next to the aspen and poplars comes the canoe birch, and further north
the yellow birch, and such other trees as have provision for
scattering their seeds. I have seen acorns and nuts germinating in
clusters on burned lands in a few instances. They had evidently been
buried there by animals and had escaped the fires. I have seen the red
cherry (_Prunus Pennsylvanica_) coming up in great quantities where
they might never have germinated had not the fires destroyed the
debris which covered the seed too deeply.
A careful examination around the margin of a burned forest will show
the trees of surrounding kinds working in again. Thus by the time the
short-lived aspens (and they are very short-lived on high land) have
made a covering on the burned land, the surrounding kinds will be
found re-established in the new forest, the seeds of the conifers,
carried in by the winds, the berries by the birds, the nuts and acorns
by the squirrels, the mixture varying more or less from the kinds
which grew there before the fire.
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