104 FIRST BOOK OF FORESTRY 



PROTECTION AGAINST INJURY FROM THE ELEMENTS 



Fire. For our American forests, fire lias been, and is 

 even now, the most dangerous enemy. When the white 

 man first came to this country he found an undisturbed con- 

 tinuous forest covering the eastern United States. When 

 the " cruisers " of forty years ago located timber lands 

 in Michigan and Wisconsin there were few extensive 

 "burns," or areas where the* fire had converted the forest 

 into a barren waste. To-day many millions of acres are 

 burns ; large ones are found in Maine, Canada, in the 

 Lake States, and the forests of the Rocky Mountains. 

 The Sierra Nevada and Cascade Ranges are fairly dotted 

 with unsightly burns ; and even the ever-dripping, fog- 

 shrouded forests of red fir in Washington have suffered 

 extensive and most destructive fires. 



Our hardwoods or broad-leaved forests have never been 

 ravaged by fires to any great extent; fire is a danger 

 chiefly of the coniferous forest, particularly of the pineries 

 covering the large sandy districts of both the North and 

 South and the dry mountain forests of the West. 



In our settled districts forest fires are rather uncommon 

 and the danger is steadily growing less ; but in our large 

 pineries, and wherever extensive lumbering is done in 

 coniferous forests, fires are of common yearly occurrence. 

 Now and then, during dry seasons, they are more numerous 

 and some of them become truly terrific. 



