About 1934 when approximately half of the Reservation, including nearly all the woodland areas, was fenced against livestock, shrubs and young trees sprang up in great abundance, especially in more open woodland situations, and at the edge of the forest. Sumac (_Rhus glabra_) often dominated at first in such situations. Crab-apple, wild plum, red haw, chinquapin oak, prickly ash, dogwood, honey locust, and redbud also soon came into prominence. By 1954 thickets had grown up and the intense competition had killed much of the woody vegetation. Sumac, especially, had been almost entirely killed out by the shading. By then, however, the adjacent fields had been protected for eight years from grazing, and sparse sumac thickets were present on the field sides of the fences, the average sizes of the plants progressively declining farther from the edge of the woods. Much mortality had occurred also in all the other species mentioned, with only a few of the larger surviving in competition with elm, hackberry, ash and osage orange, and with reproduction practically stopped except near the edges of the thickets. In 1954, after approximately 20 years of protection from livestock, the woodland had become much denser, with a thick understory of saplings and tall shrubs in most places. From a time soon after protection was initiated, there was little or no reproduction (except where the woodland originally was open) in blackjack oak, dwarf or chinquapin oak, red haw, honey locust, and osage orange. On one south slope, an open woods with well scattered trees of black oak, American elm, hackberry, honey locust and osage orange, had by 1954 become so dense that it was almost impassable except with the aid of a brush knife to cut or break through the thickets. Saplings of honey locust made up an important part of the understory vegetation on this slope. Those of the smallest size group, up to 1-1/2 inches stem diameter, were mostly dead; in a strip 900 feet long and 50 feet wide there were 29 dead saplings and ten live ones of this size group. In the next largest size group, up to 2-1/2 inches in stem diameter, there were 17 dead and 53 live saplings, while in the size group 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 inches stem diameter, there was one dead sapling and 51 were alive. On another south slope, which had more large and medium-sized trees and less dense underbrush, 233 saplings six inches or less in stem diameter, counted on a sample strip 530 feet long and 40 feet wide, included elm 37.3%, dogwood 19.7%, hackberry 16.4%, coffee-tree 15.6%, honey locust 11.0%, plum 10.3%, chestnut oak 5.5%, crab-apple 3.4%, osage orange 2.1%, red haw 1.4%, hickory, redbud, mulberry and cockspur thorn each .7%. There was substantial mortality in the saplings of several of these species; plum 86.5%, dogwood 69.5%, elm 49.5%, locust 31.2%, chestnut oak 25.0%, coffee-tree 4.4%.