862 FOREST FIRES. 
without fatal injury to the younger growths, the native forest will 
bear several “ cuttings over” in a generation—for the increasing 
value of lumber brings into use, every four or five years, a 
quality of timber which had been before rejected as unmarket- 
able—a fire may render the declivity of a mountain unprodue- 
tive for a century.* 
Aside from the destruction of the trees and the laying bare of 
the soil, and consequently the freer admission of sun, rain, and air 
to the ground, the fire of itself exerts an important influence on 
its texture and condition. It cracks and sometimes even pulveri- 
strobus, as it is the most valuable, is also perhaps the most delicate tree of the 
American forest, while its congener, the Northern pitch-pine, Pinws rigida, is 
less injured by fire than any other tree of that country. I have heard expe- 
rienced lumbermen maintain that the growth of this pine was even accele- 
rated by a fire brisk enough to destroy all other trees, and I have myself seen 
it still flourishing after a conflagration which had left not a green leaf but its 
own in the wood, and actually throwing out fresh foliage, when the old had 
been quite burnt off and the bark almost converted into charcoal. The wood 
of the pitch-pine is of comparatively little value for the joiner, but it is useful 
for very many purposes. Its rapidity of growth in even poor soils, its hardi- 
hood, and its abundant yield of resinous producis, entitle it to much more 
consideration, as a plantation tree, than it has hitherto received in Europe or 
America. 
* Between sixty and seventy years ago, a steep mountain with which I am 
familiar, composed of metamorphic rock, and at that time covered with a 
thick coating of soil and a dense primeval forest, was accidentally burnt over. 
The fire took place in a very dry season, the slope of the mountain was too 
rapid to retain much water, and the conflagration was of an extraordinarily 
fierce character, consuming the wood almost entirely, burning the leayes and 
combustible portion of the mould, and in many places cracking and disinte- 
grating the rock beneath. The rainsof the following autumn carried off much 
of the remaining soil, and the mountain-side was nearly bare of wood for 
two or three years afterwards. At length a new crop of trees sprang up and 
grew vigorously, and the mountain is now thickly covered again. But the 
depth of mould and earth is too small to allow the trees to reach maturity, 
When they attain to the diameter of about six inches, they uniformly die, and 
this they will no doubt continue to do until the decay of leaves and wood on 
the surface, and the decomposition of the subjacent rock, shall have formed, 
perhaps hundreds of years hence, a stratum of soil thick enough to support a 
full-grown forest. Under favorable conditions, however, as in the case of the 
fire of Miramichi, a burnt forest renews itself rapidly and permanently. 
