84 



A PRIMER OF FORESTRY. 



when only the top of a thick layer of duft' is dry euougli 

 to burn. The heat may not be great enough to kill any 

 but the smallest and teuderest young trees, but that 

 does not mean that such fires do no harm. The future 

 of the forest depends on just such young growth, and 

 whenever the forest floor, which is so necessary both 



to the trees and for the 

 water sui)p]y, is injured or 

 destroyed by fire, the for- 

 est sufi'ers harm. 



SURFACE FIRES. 



Fig. 79. — A surface fire burning slowly 

 against the wind. Southern New 

 Jersey. 



Surface fires may be 

 checked if they are feeble 

 by beating them out with 

 green branches, or by rak- 

 ing the leaves away from a 

 narrow strip across their 

 coarse. The best tool for 

 this i^urpose is a four-tined 

 pitchfork, or a common stable fork. In sandy regions 

 a thin and narrow belt of sand is easily and quickly 

 sprinkled over the ground with a shovel, and will check 

 the spread of a weak fire, or even of a comparatively 

 hot one if there is no wind. Dirt or sand thrown on a 

 burning fire is one of the best of all means for putting 

 it out. (See fig. 79.) 



In dense forests with a heavy forest floor, fires are 

 often hot enough not only to kill the standing timber, 

 but to consume the trunks and branches altogether, 

 and even to follow the roots far down into the ground. 

 In forests of this kind fire spreads easily, creeping along 

 on the surface or through the duft' or under the bark 



