616 Natural History of Nova Scotia. 



combustion, [ ? as the] remarkable crackling, and immense 

 volume of smoke, produced by a fire in a thicket [? of black] 

 spruce, have sometimes been mistaken for [? some kind of] 

 storm, by persons at a distance of a mile [? from the] fire. 



By these fires, the leaves and small spray [? of the, ? and 

 the] branches are consumed, together with the [? coat of] 

 litter which covered the surface, and which, by excluding the 

 sunbeams, had kept the turf at a low and equal temperature. 



The naked black surface is now exposed to the sun, and 

 the process of putrefaction commences in earnest, affecting 

 the turf as well as the roots of the vegetables which have been 

 killed by the fire. The increased temperature of this natural 

 hot-bed brings into action the vegetative powers of seeds 

 which had lain dormant for centuries ; raspberries spring up 

 in abundance, together with red-berried elder, birdcherry, 

 sumach, prickly aralia [? Aralia spinosa], and evergreen 

 fumitory. The French willow [Epilobium angustifolium L. ; 

 or some one or more other species] and the cacalias, whose 

 suffocating down is so troublesome to the thresher upon new 

 lands, soon find out their favourite light soil. The whole face 

 of the country is changed. Tracts of a hundred acres are 

 thickly covered by raspberries, loaded with a luxuriant crop. 

 The low barren levels overspread with blueberries ; and large 

 tracts occupied by the French willow, which forms so striking 

 an object, with its long spikes of purplish red flowers ; together 

 w r ith the large clusters of the scarlet elderberry, which ap- 

 pears occasionally in the low stony ground ; altogether give 

 an idea of fertility which forms a remarkable contrast with 

 the sterile appearance of the same soil previous to the fire. 



Within three years this fertility disappears ; the turf is 

 greatly reduced in quantity; the land becomes hard and 

 cold, presenting that exhausted appearance which always 

 follows the raising of crops on a burnt soil. A few clumps 

 only of the raspberry and French willow remain, in situations 

 where the lightness of the soil is preserved by having the 

 surface covered with broken stones, or the tops of fallen trees. 

 Shoots from the white maple [A^cer dasycarpon Ehrh. (syn., 

 eriocarpon Mx.)~] (the roots of which are never killed by fires), 

 brakes, sweet fern [ComptonzVz «spleniif61ia H. AT.], dwarf 

 willows, and withrod, occupy the ground, presently followed 

 by alder ; and, when they have formed a sufficient shelter, the 

 firs again spring up, mixed with white birch [Z?etulajoopulifdlia 

 H. K. : see the Penny Cyclopaedia] and poplars [several 

 species inhabit North America]. In the lower and more 

 barren tracts the blueberry [? Faccinium ? venustum H. K.] 

 is, by degrees, overgrown by the kalmia and rhodora [-Kho- 



