Wood and Forest Part 39

Roth, _First Book_, p. 4.

Boulger, pp. 70-75.

Spaulding, _For. Bull._, No. 22.

Ward, Chaps. V, VI, VII.

Sickles, pp. 41-45.

von Schrenck, _For. Bull._, No. 41, Pl. III.

Sherfesee. _For. Circ._ No. 139.

von Schrenck, _Bur. Plant Ind. Bull._ No. 36.

von Schrenck, _Bur. Plant Ind. Bull._ No. 32.

von Schrenck, _Agric. Yr. Bk._, 1900, p. 199.

(3) Animal.

Grazing.

Pinchot, _Primer I_, pp. 69-73, II, p. 73.

Pinchot, _Agric. Yr. Bk._, 1898, p. 187 Coville, _For. Bull._ No. 15, pp. 28-31.

Roth, _First Bk._, p. 130, 178.

Insects.

Comstock, pa.s.sim.

Hopkins, _Agric. Yr. Bk._, 1902, pp. 265-282.

Roth, _First Book_, pp. 115-130.

Howard, _Entom. Bull._, No. 11, n. s.

Hopkins, Spaulding, _Entom. Bull._, No. 28.

Hopkins, _Entom. Bull._, No. 48.

Hopkins, _Agric. Yr. Bk._, 1903, pp. 313-329.

Hopkins, _Agric. Yr. Bk._, 1904, pp. 382-389, Figs. 43-56.

Pinchot, _Primer_, I, p. 73.

Felt, N. Y. _State Museum Bull._, 103, Ent. 25.

Hopkins, _Entom. Bull._ No. 32.

Hopkins, _Entom. Bull._ No. 56.

Hopkins, _Entom. Bull._ No. 58.

Spaulding and Chittenden, _For. Bull._ No. 22, pp. 55-61.

[Footnote A: For general bibliography, see p. 4.]

CHAPTER VII.

THE EXHAUSTION OF THE FOREST.

The exhaustion of the forest in the United States is due to two main causes: (1) Fire, and (2) Destructive Lumbering.

FIRE.

It is not commonly realized that forest fires are almost entirely the result of human agency. When cruisers first began to locate claims in this country, practically no regions had been devastated by fire. Now such regions are to be seen everywhere. Altho lightning occasionally sets fire to forests, especially in the Rocky Mountains, the losses from this cause are trifling compared with the total loss.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 104. Slash, Left in the Woods, and Ready to Catch Fire. _U. S. Forest Service._]

_Opportunities for fire._ There are a number of facts that make the forest peculiarly liable to fire. Especially in the fall there are great quant.i.ties of inflammable material, such as dry leaves, twigs, and duff lying loose ready for ignition. The bark of some trees, as "paper birch," and the leaves of others, as conifers, are very inflammable. It follows that fires are more common in coniferous than in deciduous forests. After lumbering or windfalls, the acc.u.mulated "slash" burns easily and furiously, Fig. 104. Moreover a region once burned over, is particularly liable to burn again, on account of the acc.u.mulation of dry trunks and branches. See Fig. 107.

Long dry seasons and high wind furnish particularly favorable conditions for fire. On the other hand, the wind by changing in direction may extinguish the fire by turning it back upon its track.

Indeed the destructive power of fires depends largely upon the wind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 105. Forest Fire. _U. S. Forest Service._]

_Causes of fire._ Forest fires are due to all sorts of causes, accidental and intentional. Dropped matches, smouldering tobacco, neglected camp fires and brush fires, locomotive sparks, may all be accidental causes that under favorable conditions entail tremendous loss. There is good reason to believe that many forest fires are set intentionally. The fact that gra.s.s and berry bushes will soon spring up after a fire, leads sheep men, cattle and pig owners, and berry pickers to set fires. Vast areas are annually burned over in the United States for these reasons. Most fires run only along the surface of the ground, doing little harm to the big timber, and if left alone will even go out of themselves; but if the duff is dry, the fire may smoulder in it a long time, ready to break out into flame when it reaches good fuel or when it is fanned by the wind, Fig. 105. Even these ground fires do incalculable damage to seeds and seedlings, and the safest plan is to put out every fire no matter how small.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 106. Burned Forest of Engelmann Spruce.

Foreground, Lodgepole Pine Coming in. _U. S. Forest Service._]

Altho it is true that the loss of a forest is not irremediable because vegetation usually begins again at once, Fig. 106, yet the actual damage is almost incalculable. The tract may lie year after year, covered with only worthless weeds and bushes, and if hilly, the region at once begins to be eroded by the rains.

After the fire, may come high winds that blow down the trunks of the trees, preparing material for another fire, Fig. 107.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 107. Effect of Fire and Wind. Colorado. _U. S.

Forest Service._]

The statistics of the actual annual money loss of the timber burned in the United States are not gathered. In 1880 Professor Sargent collected much information, and in the census of that year (10th Census, Vol. IX) reported 10,000,000 acres burned that year at a value of $25,000,000.

In 1891, the Division of Forestry collected authentic records of 12,000,000 acres burned over in a single year, at an estimated value of $50,000,000.

In the Adironacks in the spring of 1903, an unprecedentedly dry season, fire after fire caused a direct loss of about $3,500,000.

In 1902, a fire on the dividing line between Washington and Oregon destroyed property amounting to $12,000,000. Within comparatively recent years, the Pacific Coast states have lost over $100,000,000 worth of timber by fire alone.

During September, 1908, forest fires raged in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, New York and Pennsylvania. The estimates of loss for northern Michigan alone amounted to $40,000,000. For two weeks the loss was set at $1,000,000 a day. The two towns of Hibbing and Chisholm were practically wiped out of existence, and 296 lives were lost.

Certain forest fires have been so gigantic and terrible as to become historic.

One of these is the Miramichi fire of 1825. It began its greatest destruction about one o'clock in the afternoon of October 7th of that year, at a place about sixty miles above the town of Newcastle, on the Miramichi River, in New Brunswick. Before ten o'clock at night it was twenty miles below New Castle. In nine hours it had destroyed a belt of forest eighty miles long and twenty-five miles wide. Over more than two and a half million acres almost every living thing was killed. Even the fish were afterwards found dead in heaps on the river banks. Many buildings and towns were destroyed, one hundred and sixty persons perished, and nearly a thousand head of stock. The loss from the Miramichi fire is estimated at $300,000, not including the value of the timber. (Pinchot, Part 1. p. 79-80.)

Of such calamities, one of the worst that is on record is that known as the Peshtigo fire, which, in 1871, during the same month, October, when Chicago was laid in ashes, devastated the country about the sh.o.r.es of Green Bay in Wisconsin. More than $3,000,000 worth of property was burnt, at least two thousand families of settlers were made homeless, villages were destroyed and over a thousand lives lost. (Bruncken, p. 110.)

The most destructive fire of more recent years was that which started near Hinckley, Minn., September 1, 1894. While the area burned over was less than in some other great fires, the loss of life and property was very heavy. Hinckley and six other towns were destroyed, about 500 lives were lost, more than 2,000 persons were left dest.i.tute, and the estimated loss in property of various kinds was $25,000,000. Except for the heroic conduct of locomotive engineers and other railroad men, the loss of life would have been far greater.

This fire was all the more deplorable, because it was wholly unnecessary. For many days before the high wind came and drove it into uncontrollable fury, it was burning slowly close to the town of Hinckley and could have been put out. (Pinchot, Part I, 82-83.)

One of the most remarkable features of these "crown fires," is the rapidity with which they travel. The Miramichi fire traveled nine miles an hour.

To get an idea of the fury of a forest fire, read this description from Bruncken. After describing the steady, slow progress of a duff fire, he proceeds:

But there comes an evening when n.o.body thinks of going to bed.

All day the smoke has become denser and denser, until it is no longer a haze, but a thick yellowish ma.s.s of vapor, carrying large particles of sooty cinders, filling one's eyes and nostrils with biting dust, making breathing oppressive. There is no escape from it. Closing windows and doors does not bar it out of the houses; it seems as if it could penetrate solid walls. Everything it touches feels rough, as if covered with fine ashes. The heat is horrible altho no ray of sunshine penetrates the heavy pall of smoke.