RESULTS OF FOREST FIRES. 



19 



and flourish in the mellow soil. On the mosl barren portions, the 

 blueberry appears almost everywhere ; great fields of red raspbei 

 and fire-weed or French willow, spring up along the edges of the 

 beech and hemlock land, and abundance of redberried elder and 

 wild red cherry appear soon after; but in a few years, the raspberries 

 and most of the herbage disappear, and are followed by a growth of 

 firs, white and yellow birch, and poplar. When a succession of fires 

 has occurred, small shrubs occupy the barren, the Kalmia, or sheep- 

 poison, being the most abundant ; and, in the course of ten or twelve 

 years, form so much turf, that a thicket of small alder begins to grow, 

 under the shelter of which fir, spruce, haciuetac (larch), and white 

 birch spring up. "When the ground is thoroughly .shaded by a 

 thicket twenty feet high, the species which originally occupied the 

 ground, begins to prevail, and suffocate the wood which sheltered it ; 

 and within sixty years, the land will generally be covered with a young 

 growth of the same kind that it produced of old." Assuming the 

 above statements to be a correct summary of the principal modes in 

 which forests arc reproduced, we may proceed to consider them more 

 in detail. 



1st, Where the forest trees are merely cut down and not burned, 

 the same description of wood is immediately reproduced. This may 

 be easily accounted for. The soil contains abundance of the seeds of 

 these trees, there are even numerous young plants ready to take the 

 place of those which have been destroyed ; and if the trees have been 

 cut in winter, their stumps produce young shoots. Even in cases of 

 this kind, however, a number of shrubs and herbaceous plants, not for- 

 merly growing in the place, spring up ; the cause of this may be more 

 properly noticed when describing cases of another kind. This simplest 

 mode of the destruction of the forest, may assume another aspect. If 

 the original wood have been of kinds requiring a fertile soil, such as 

 maple or beech, and if this wood be removed, for example, for firewood, 

 it may happen that the quantity of inorganic matter thus removed 

 from the soil may incapacitate it, at least for a long time, from pro- 

 ducing the same description of timber. In this case, some species 

 requiring a less fertile soil may occupy the ground. For this reason, 

 forests of beech growing on light soils, when removed for firewood, 

 are sometimes succeeded by spruce and fir. I have observed instances 

 of this kind, both in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. 



2dly, When the trees are burned, without the destruction of the 

 whole of the vegetable soil, the woods are reproduced by a more 

 complicated process, which may occupy a number of years. In its 

 first stage, the burned ground bears a luxuriant crop of herbs and 



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