RESULTS Or FOREST FIRES. 



51 



■simple moans which have been described, a clothing < >f vegetation is 



speedily furnished to the binned district; the unsightliness of its 

 appearance is thus removed, abundant supplies of food are furnished 

 to a great variety of animals, and the fertility of the soil is pi. 

 until a new foresl has time to overspread it. 



With the smaller plants which lirst cover a burned district great 

 numbers of seedling trees spring up, and these, though for a few 

 years not very conspicuous, eventually overtop and, if numerous, 

 suffocate the humbler vegetation. Many of these young trees are 

 of the species which composed the original wood, but the majority 

 are usually different from the former occupants of the soil. The 

 original forest may have consisted of white or red pine; black, 

 white, or hemlock spruce ; maple, beech, black or yellow birch, 

 or of other trees of large dimensions, and capable of attaining to 

 a great age. The "second growth" which succeeds these usually 

 consists of poplar, white or poplar birch, wild cherry, balsam fir, 

 scrub pine, alder, and other trees of small stature, and usually of 

 rapid growth, which, in good soils, prepare the way for the larger 

 forest trees, and occupy permanently only the less fertile soils. A 

 few examples will show the contrast which thus appears between the 

 primeval forest and that which succeeds it after a fire. Near the 

 town of Pictou, woods chiefly consisting of beech, maple, and hemlock, 

 have been succeeded by white birch and firs. A clearing in woods 

 of maple and beech in New Annan, at one time under cultivation, 

 was, after thirty years, observed to be thickly covered with poplars 

 thirty feet in height, presenting a striking contrast to the surrounding 

 woods. In Prince Kdward Island, fine hardwood forests have been 

 succeeded by fir and spruce. The pine woods of Miramichi, 

 destroyed by the great fire above referred to, have been followed 

 by a second growth, principally composed of white birch, larch, 

 poplar, and wild cherry. When I visited this place, twenty years 

 after the great fire, the second growth had attained to nearly half 

 the height of the dead trunks of the ancient pines, which were still 

 Standing in great numbers; and* in 18GG I found that the burnt woods 

 were replaced by a dense and luxuriant forest principally of white 

 birch and larch or hacmetac, and I was informed that some of th< 

 trees were already sufficiently large to be used in ship-building. 

 This is an instructive illustration of the fact, that after a great forest 

 fire an extensive region may in less than half a century be re-clothed 

 with different species from those by which it was originally covered. 



As already stated, the second growth almost always includes many 

 trees similar to those which preceded it, and when the smaller tr 



