THE FORESTS IN PROCESS OF EXTINCTION. 61 



fires within seventy-five years, but where none have occurred during 

 the past thirty-five years. 



Recent Bums.— Areas burned over within the last thirty-five years, 

 and on which the destruction of the timber has been from G5 per cent 



to total. 



The Old Growth covers the smallest areas in the Cceur d'Alenes. It 

 is most common in the Crest Line and Yellow Pine zones and least in 

 the White Pine, tor reasons to be stated farther on. 



The Second Growth comprises the major portion of the growing 

 timber fit for lumbering purposes. It is most abundant in the White 

 Pine Zone. 



The Young Growth and Recent Burns are more plentiful and of 

 larger extent in the White Pine Zone than elsewhere. 



FOREST DESTRUCTION. 



Under this head we will consider the agencies which are now operat- 

 ing to destroy the forests of this region and the remedies which, if 

 applied, would have a tendency to check them. 



The remarks to follow will in a large measure fit the conditions 

 which prevail throughout the forest regions of Idaho, Washington, and 

 Oregon, and if the remedies to be proposed would secure the desired 

 result here they would do the same elsewhere where like circumstances 



exist. 



The Cceur d'Alene forests are in process of rapid and total extinction. 

 The slow agencies of nature which are constantly destroying but as 

 constantly replacing are augmented by the efforts of man, who, with all 

 the means of destruction at hand, tears down the work of centuries, 

 but gives no thought toward the rebuilding of the fabric. 



The forests of the Cceur d'Alenes in all the accessible portions are 

 becoming mere skeletons of their former state, and soon the last vestiges 

 will be swept away and nothing remain but blackened logs and stumps 

 to mark the former site of the densest forest between the Cascades and 

 the Mississippi. 



The popular mind, fostered by the newspapers of the West, refuses 

 to believe that the forest region of the Pacific Slope is other than inex- 

 haustible. It is a most pernicious idea, and one which is largely respon- 

 sible for the apathy of popular opinion upon forest preservation in the 

 West. Journals and newspapers in every section, in attempting to 

 exhibit the natural advantages of their several localities, will, if in a 

 forest region, invariably lay stress upon the inexhaustible supply of tim- 

 ber fit for lumbering and other purposes, absolutely ignoring the fact, 

 patent to every careful observer, that in a country so rugged and diffi- 

 cult of access as that formed by the ranges west of the Continental 

 Divide only a very small proportion of the forest covering can be 

 reached economically, and that the accessible localities are being 

 denuded as rapidly as the ingenuity and carelessness of the inhabitants 



