154 The Farm Woodlot 



those regions in which there is a great amount of peat in 

 the soil, this usually being the case in swampy country only. 

 Such land is too wet to burn except in very dry seasons, 

 when it becomes very inflammable. A fire started on the 

 surface eats rapidly into the ground, sometimes to consider- 

 able depths according to the thickness of the peat forma- 

 tion. The fierce heat from such a fire enables it, when it 

 has once secured a good start, to dry out the ground ahead 

 of it sufficiently to burn through a quite wet swamp. 

 Fire often smolders across a swamp in this way unnoticed 

 and breaks out in a violent conflagration on the other side. 

 The Hinckley fire and several other disastrous fires started 

 in just this way. The usual cause of such a ground fire is 

 a poorly located and neglected camp fire ; sometimes it is a 

 discarded match or cigar stump or a surface fire. Such a 

 fire destroys not only the fertility of the soil, but the soil 

 itself, and burns off the roots of the trees so that they fall 

 of their own weight or are blown over by the first wind. 

 This makes a tangled mass of dead trees and brush in 

 which the next fire would be wholly beyond control. 

 There is only one way to fight such a fire : by ditching all 

 around it to the depth of the mineral soil and keeping a 

 careful watch to see that it does not cross the ditch. If, 

 by any chance, the fire gets a start unnoticed and kills the 

 trees, the burned area should be gone over as soon as 

 possible and all the material that can be used in any form 

 removed. This should not be neglected, for the shallow- 

 rooted species that grow in such situations are seldom du- 

 rable and rot very rapidly. When the useful material has 

 been removed, the remaining brush should be burned 

 carefully to lessen the chances of another fire. 



