SLASH BURNING IN THE LAKE STATES. 



The first steps towards the establishment of scientific forestry 

 methods in the Lake States, as in every other region, are measures 

 of protection. The two enemies which demand particular attention 

 are the high rate of forest taxation and fire. For the amelioration 

 of the first of the evils no satisfactory solution has as yet been 

 reached, and none will be reached till the state, county, town and 

 forest owners submit the question to some disinterested party for 

 arbitration. The advantage heretofore has always been on the side 

 of the tax collectors, but some concessions must be made to the pri- 

 vate owners if any thing is to be accomplished in the way of reform. 

 In the matter of fire protection considerable results have already 

 been accomplished and a great deal more is well within the reach of 

 all far-sighted owners or states if the way is but pointed out to 

 them. 



The experience of the Government Forest Reserve at Cass Lake, 

 and elsewhere in the region where the experiment has been tried, has 

 proved conclusively that the burning of the slashings on cut-over 

 land is a wonderful help if not an absolute prevention in keeping 

 out fire. Every logger knows, and no one is better qualified to 

 judge, that nine-tenths of the fires in the woods start in the debris 

 left by the lumbermen. When the slashings are burned and the 

 forest floor kept clean there is little chance for a dangerours fire, 

 and all such as start are easily controlled on account of the scarcity 

 of fuel. 



The lumberman has but one objectioii to this process of brush 

 burning, it costs too much money. He would rather run the chances 

 of completing his logging operations and getting out of the coun- 

 try before the fire gets in. The principal benefit derived from the 

 jslash burning, namely, the almost complete restocking of the land 

 by natural regeneration, has no influence with him because of a false 

 observation — that White and Norway Pine will not follow them- 

 selves, A trip through the Cass Lake Reserve, where slash burning 

 has been carried on for the last three or four years, or through por- 

 tions of the Fond Du Lac Indian Reservation, where the fire does not 

 happen to have swept over the ground, cannot help but convince 

 anyone that the White and Norway Pine reproduce themselves very 

 readily if given half a chance. It is only where a severe fire has 

 ^one over the land, killing all the White and Norway Pine seed that 



