TOO GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF NEW JERSEY. 



large number of small tributaries, and generally one cannot go 

 far in any direction without coming to a running brook, but in 

 the pine belt there are quite large areas of the higher ground 

 with no visible streams. 



FIRES IN THE PINE FOREST. 



We have noted previously that some damage is done by fires 

 in the deciduous forest. This damage is confined principally to 

 Kittatinny, Bearfort, Green Pond and Copperas mountains and 

 the extreme northern Highlands. The fires in the deciduous 

 forests are usually confined to small areas. In the pine forests 

 of Southern New Jersey, however, extensive fires occur every 

 summer. Any one who has witnessed a fire under full headway 

 in this country must have been impressed with its grandeur, its 

 irresistible fury and its disastrous effects. A few notes of 

 remarkable fires are at hand. In 1866 a fire burned over 10,000 

 acres, extending seven miles inland from Tuckerton and West 

 Creek. In 1870 and 1871 nearly the whole wooded portion of 

 Bass River township, Burlington county, was burned over. In 



1871 two fires in Ocean county burned over 30,000 acres. In 



1872 a fire burned over from 15 to 20 square miles, worth before 

 the fire from $10 to $30 per acre, and after from $2 to $4. In a 

 paper on forest fires, by Mr. Charles E. Elmer, in the Report of 

 State Board of Agriculture for 1874, he says of the year 1872 : 

 u To assume that 100,000 acres have been burned over, at a 

 money loss in timber of $1,000,000, would surely be within the 

 bounds of truth." From the census of 1880 we have for that 

 year an area burned over of 71,074 acres, with an estimated loss 

 of $252,240, which is certainly a very moderate estimate, and 

 can scarcely include any allowance for loss of cedar swamps. 

 In 1885, when the topographic survey was in progress, some 

 very large fires occurred in the pine district, and the areas 

 covered were noted by the topographers. One burned over an 

 area of 60 square miles, near Atsion, in Burlington county ; 

 another, near Friendship, in the same county, covered 10 square 

 miles, and another, in Ocean county, burned over not less than 

 75 square miles north of Barnegat. The total of these three 

 fires is, therefore, 145 square miles, but several other fires 



