FOKEST FIRES. 373 



Forest Fires. 



The difficulty of protecting the woods against accidental or 

 incendiary fires is one of the most discouraging circumstances 

 attending the preservation of natural and the plantation of arti- 

 ficial forests.* In the spontaneous wood the spread of fire is 

 somewhat retarded by the general humidity of the soil and of 

 the beds of leaves which cover it. But in long droughts the su- 

 perficial layer of leaves and the dry fallen branches become as 

 inflammable as tinder, and the fii'e spreads with fearful rapidity, 

 until its further progress is arrested by want of material, or more 

 rarely, by heavy rains, sometimes caused, as many meteorologists 

 suppose, by the conflagration itself. 



In the artificial forest the annual removal of fallen or haK- 

 dried trees and the leaves and other droppings of the wood, 

 though otherwise a very injurious practice, much diminishes the 

 rapid spread of fires ; and the absence of combustible underwood 

 and the greater distance between the trees are additional safe- 

 guards. But, on the other hand, the comparative diyness of the 



* The disappearance of the forests of ancient Gaul and of mediaeval France 

 has been ascribed by some writers as much to accidental fires as to the felling 

 of the trees. All the treatises on sylviculture are full of narratives of forest 

 fires. The woods of Corsica and Sardinia have suffered incalculable injury 

 from this cause, and notwithstanding the resistance of the cork-tree to injury 

 from common fires, the government forests of this valuable tree in Algeria 

 have been lately often set on fire by the natives and have sustained immense 

 damage. 



See an article by Tsabeau in the Annales Forestieres, t. iii., p. 439 ; Della 

 ISIarmora, Voyage en Sardaigne, 2d edition, t. i., p. 426 ; Bivista Forestale del 

 Regno d' Italia, October, 1865, p. 474. 



Five or six years ago I saw in Switzerland a considerable forest, chiefly of 

 young trees, which had recently been burnt over. I was told that the poor of 

 the commune had long enjoyed a customary privilege of carrying off dead 

 wood and windfalls, and that they had set the forest on fire to kill the trees 

 and so increase the supply of their lawful plunder. According to the Italia, ii. , 

 p. 193, the Italian Government claims, in some of the Southern provinces, 

 all forest products as its exclusive right, though not claiming the soil. The 

 peasantry set fire to the woods and destroy them in order to get possession of 

 the ground they cover. 



The customary rights of herdsmen, shepherds and peasants in European 

 forests are often an insuperable obstacle to the success of attempts to preserve 

 the woods or to improve their condition. See, on this subject, Alfred- 

 Matjry, Les anciens Forits de la Oaule, chap. xxix. 



