FOREST FIRES. 361 
Lifects of Forest Fires. 
The operations of the lumberman involve other dangers to 
the woods besides the loss of the trees felled by him. The 
narrow clearings around his shanties form openings which let 
in the wind, and thus sometimes occasion the overthrow of 
thousands of trees, the fall of which dams up small streams, 
and creates bogs by the spreading of the waters, while the de- 
caying trunks facilitate the multiplication of the insects which 
breed in dead wood and are, some of them, injurious to living 
trees. The escape and spread of camp-fires, however, is the 
most devastating of all the causes of destruction that find their 
origin in the operations of the lumberman. The proportion of 
trees fit for industrial uses is small in all primitive woods. Only 
these fall before the forester’s axe, but the fire destroys, almost in- 
discriminately, every age and every species of tree.* While, then, 
1869, shows the amount cut as being 2,029,872,255 feet for the State of 
Michigan, and 317,400,000 feet for the State of Minnesota, and 964,600,000 
feet for the State of Wisconsin. This includes the lake shore and the whole 
State of Wisconsin, which heretofore has been difficult to get a report from. 
The total amount cut in these States was 3,311,572,255 feet, and that to 
obtain this quantity there have been shipped 883,032 acres, or 1,380 square 
miles of pine have been removed. It is calculated that 4,000,000 acres of land 
still remain unstripped in Michigan, which will yield 15,000,000,000 feet of lum- 
ber; while 3,000,000 acres are still standing in Wisconsin, which will yield 11,- 
250,000,000 feet, and that which remains in Minnesota, taking the estimate of a 
few years since of that which was surveyed and unexplored, after deducting 
the amount cut the past few years, we find 3,630,000 acres to be the proper 
estimate of trees now standing which will yield 52,562,500,000 feet of lumber. 
This makes a total of 15,630,000 acres of pine lands, which remain standing in 
the above States, that will yield 58,612,500,000 feet of lumber, and it is thought 
that fifteen or twenty years will be required to cut and send to market the 
trees now standing.” 
See also BRYANT, Forest Trees, chap. iv. 
* Trees differ in their power of resisting the action of forest fires. Differ- 
ent woods vary greatly in combustibility, and even when the bark is scarcely 
scorched, trees are, partly in consequence of physiological character, and 
partly from the greater or less depth at which their roots habitually lie below 
the surface, differently affected by running fires. The white pine, Pius 
