FUEL-WOODS OF THE FARM 85 



rungs. As live coals form, the birch poles are burned 

 through in the middle and fall in the midst of the coals 

 and keep on burning. The extension of the fire outward 

 is promoted by the upward inclination of their ends. A 

 fire of this sort, properly begun, will continue to burn steadily 

 through the greater part of the night, without excess of heat 

 at the beginning, and without any further attention. 



A woodsman knows there are certain fuels that burn well 

 enough but must be avoided in camp: hemlock, for 

 example, whose confined combustion-gases explode noisily, 

 throwing live coals in all directions. One does not want his 

 blankets burned full of holes. And even the householder 

 who sits by his fireplace should know that there are woods 

 like hickory and sassafras that burn with the fragrance of 

 incense; woods like sumach that crackle and sing ; woods 

 like knotty pitch pine that flare and sputter and run low, 

 and give off flames with tints as variable and as delightful as 

 their shapes are fantastic. One who has burned knots 

 observantly, will never order from his fuel-dealer for an open 

 fire "clear straight-grained wood," even though he have to 

 split it himself. 



It has been the wasteful American way to pile and burn the 

 tree-tops in the woods for riddance of them, and then to split 

 kindling at home. With a wood famine at hand we ought to be 

 less wasteful. Half the wood produced by a tree is in its 

 branches. Some trees hold their branches long after they are 

 killed by overhead shading. Others, with less resistant bark, 

 drop' them early and in an advanced stage of decay. Fagots 

 gathered in the forest are, therefore, quite as different in their 

 burning qualities as is the wood of the trunks. It should be 

 the object of the following study to learn at first hand what 

 these differences are. 



