164 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



COST OF FOREST FIRES. 



By forest fires in 1894, the State of Wisconsin lost by estimate $5,000,- 

 000 in trees and other property, not to mention the fearful loss of over 

 400 lives. To help the people in the burned districts at least |2,500,000 

 was expended, making a loss of at least $7,500,000 in one year alone. 

 The people of Wisconsin have acted and voted means to maintain a sys- 

 tem of fire wardens in connection with a forest commission. Minnesota^ 

 after sustaining fearful losses of trees, farm property, and human lives^ 

 decided to try what virtue there was to be derived from a forest com- 

 mission. She has voted means to defray the small expenses of a few men 

 to see if something cannot be saved from fires. In 1894 Michigan expe- 

 rienced great loss from forest fires. I am sorry to say I cannot give the 

 exact amount. It would probably reach $2,500,000. 



New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, and other states, have likewise 

 been fearfully devastated by forest fires. They have legislated to pre- 

 vent some of these fires. Prussia and some other countries of Europe 

 long ago passed through the stage we are now in. Their forests were 

 burned, they organized and have succceeded in preventing most of the 

 losses since such organization. 



During ten years of experience New York has succeeded in saving 

 many times the cost of her forest commission. H. D. Ayres, in the Min- 

 nesota Horticulturist, estimates, to the best of his judgment and that of 

 others, that 40 per cent of the wooded portions of Minnesota was burned 

 over in 1894. At that time the State was making no systematic effort to 

 prevent forest fires. Prussia, with her present system of protection, in 

 one of the dryest seasons, only permitted six-tenths of one per cent to be 

 burned over. In estimating the loss which occurs by forest fires there 

 are at least two other very important items left out of the account, viz.: 



The destruction of young trees from one to thirty or forty years old, 

 many of which have a fine start towards producing valuable timber, and 

 the disastrous effect on the soil. A severe fire destroys a very large per 

 cent of the organic matter within the soil as well as that on the surface. 

 This valuable material, which is the result of decaying vegetation for 

 hundreds of years, may largely be destroyed by the fire in a single day. 

 The loss to the State by the two items last named far exceeds the loss 

 of other things usually named. We should organize and secure means to 

 dispel ignorance and arrest and punish the careless and the vicious. 



OUR PLAIN DUTY. 



Michigan, so enterprising in many other ways, should no longer remain 

 idle in her attempts to save the young trees of the forest. Shall we 

 stand idly by and see our young trees and other property perish by fire 

 while in other states they are preventing much of the loss at a trifling 

 expense? I think not, when the people fully consider the subject. 

 Some of us must keep the subject before the people until they give an 

 attentive ear. In some states the fire wardens are men already elected 

 to office in the several townships, such as supervisors, constables, justices 

 of the peace, teachers of the schools, but in any case there must be as 



