228 BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



cally and thoroughly, that our general system of forest management is 

 far from provident. But there is one deadly enemy of our forests 

 whose worst visitations can never be entirely recovered from, and that 

 is the great forest fires. It is not only the timber they destroy that 

 makes these fires so bad, for in a generation or two it may be partially 

 restored, but it is the permanent injury they do to much of our soil 

 whereby its capacity to produce trees for the future is permanently 

 lessened or even practically destroyed. Where naturally the soil is 

 thin, as it is over the rocky hills underlying much of our forest land, 

 the roots and other organic matter binding it together is utterly burnt 

 out by the great fires, and the rain washes the earth off into the 

 streams, leaving behind but the naked rocks, hostile to vegetation. 

 Most of that soil was placed there originally by the ice of the glacial 

 period, and has ever since been held in position bv its continuous 

 covering of vegetation ; once removed it can be restored only with the 

 most extreme slowness. An awful example of this practically per- 

 manent destruction is to be found in an area many miles square on 

 the upper Lepreau river ; the still standing rampikes and great stumps 

 show how fine a forest once clothed this land, which now is but a 

 stony desert that not for generations, and perhaps never, can again 

 bear trees. Here is a tract of country that might to-day be yielding 

 a revenue to the province and supporting a considerable village at the 

 mouth of the river, but it lies waste and useless because a fire twenty 

 years ago was not stopped in time. This is an extreme case, but large 

 areas in the province have suffered in but little less degree. The pre- 

 vention of forest fires is the first problem of forestry in any country, 

 and it has to be solved not only by stringent laws upon railroads, 

 lumbermen, hunters and settlers, but also by a ranger service, a corps 

 of men whose business it is to watch for fires in the dangerous season, 

 and to extinguish them at their beginning. The ranger service may 

 well be combined with that of fish and game wardens, and even with 

 some phases of lumber surveying. 



But in addition to loss of timber and permanent injury to the soil, 

 there are yet other losses suffered through the deforesting of a country.* 

 Aside from the still unsettled question as to the effect of forests upon 



* The reader who wishes further information upon these subjects will do well to turn 

 to the publications of the Division of Forestry of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, in- 

 cluding their recent "Primer of Forestry " and articles in the Year Books of the Depart- 

 ment, and also to the reports of the Maine Forestry Board. 



