through their increasing height or through thinning of the forest.
Under such conditions centuries were required to produce large
trees.

The owner of today, by cutting down the old stand, gives the suckers
conditions hitherto unknown to the redwood. The vigor and susceptibility
to the aid of light, which originally was necessary in the sprout
growth to perpetuate the species at all, now respond to entire
freedom and light in an astonishing manner. Even after severe slashing
fires char the stumps, the latter throw out clusters of sprouts
which grow several feet a year. Logging works 30 or 40 years old
have come up to trees nearly 100 feet high. Naturally such timber
has a heavy percentage of sapwood and is soft and brittle, but
it is already suitable for piling, box lumber and like purposes
and improves constantly.

Since reproduction by seed does not enter into the problem, financial
possibilities depend almost wholly on the nature of the original
stand. There are many types of redwood forest, pure and mixed,
flat and slope. If the old trees are few to the acre, the sprout
clusters will be so far apart that excess of side light will produce
clumps of swell-butted, short limby trees, of little use for lumber;
that is, unless there is also a seedling growth of fir or other
species to fill the blanks and bring up the density. Where such a
nurse growth is to be counted on, or where the redwood trees are
small and close together, ideal conditions for a certain, rapid
and well formed second crop exist.

The thinner the original redwood stand, the greater the effort
necessary at the time of logging to obtain the required density. The