518 THE FORESTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



previously worked for turpentine is of inferior quality, although it is probably less injured than has been generally 

 supposed. Comparatively few trees, however, once boxed are manufactured into lumber. It is estimated that 20 

 per cent, of them, weakened by the deep gashes inflicted upon their trunks, sooner or later are blown down and 

 ruined; fires, too, every year destroy vast areas of the turpentine orchards, in spite of the care taken by operators 

 to prevent their spread. It is customary in the winter, in order to prevent the fires which annually run through 

 the forests of the Southern Piue Belt from spreading to the boxes, to "racket" the trees; that is, to remove all 

 combustible material for a distance of 3 feet around the base of each boxed tree. Fire, carefully watched, has then 

 been set to the dry grass between the trees, in order to prevent the spread of accidental conflagrations, and to give 

 the box-choppers a firmer foothold than would be offered by the dry and slippery pine leaves. In spite of these 

 precautions, however, turpentine orchards, especially when abandoned, are often destroyed by fire. The surface 

 of the box, thickly covered with a most inflammable material, is easily ignited, and a fire once started in this way 

 may rage over thousands of acres before its fury can be checked. 



The manufacture of naval stores, then, decreases the value of the boxed tree for lumber, reduces the ability'of 

 the tree to withstand the force of gales, and enormously increases the danger to the forest of total destruction 

 by fire. 



Wilmington, the most important distributing point for this industry in the United States, handles 80 percent, 

 of all the naval stores manufactured in North Carolina. Previous to 1870 Swansboro', Washington, and New 

 Berne were also large shipping points. 



SOUTH CAROLINA. 



The forest covering of South Carolina resembles in its general features that of the states immediately north 

 and south of it. The pine fores,t of the coast, nearly coinciding in area with that of the Tertiary deposits, covers 

 the eastern portion for a distance of 150 miles from the coast. The middle districts are occupied with hard-wood 

 forests, or forests, in which pines of various species are mixed with oaks, hickories, and other deciduous trees. The 

 forests of the Alleghanies, rich in species and magnificent in tiie development of individual trees, spread over the 

 mountains and valleys, which occupy the extreme western part of the state. The streams whicli. flow through the 

 Coast Pine Belt, often bordered by wide, deep swamps, are ill-suited to lumber operations, and less serious inroads 

 have therefore been made into the pine forests of South Carolina than into those of North Carolina or Georgia. 

 The merchantable pine, however, has been removed from the immediate neighborhood of the coast, from the banks 

 of the Little Pedee river, and from along the lines of railroad. 



The most accessible hard-wood timber has been cut from the forests of the middle districts, although vast 

 quantities still remain remote from railroads or protected in deep river swamps, inaccessible except during a few 

 months of summer. The western counties still contain great bodies of hard-wood timber, yet undisturbed except 

 to supply the wants of the scattered population inhabiting this almost inaccessible mountain region. 



The manufacture of rough red and white oak split staves and headings for the European and West Indian 

 trade, already an important industry in this state, is capable of large development; rice tierces and rosin barrels 

 are also largely made iu the coast region from pine. At Plantersville, in Georgetown county, and at other points 

 along the coast quantities of hand-made cypress shingles are manufactured in the swamps. 



During the census year 431,730 acres of woodland were reported destroyed by forest fires, with a loss of 

 $291,225. These fires were set by careless hunters, by the careless burning of brush upon farms, and by sparks 

 from locomotives. 



BURNING OFF DEAD HERBAGE. 



The pine belt of the coast, in South Carolina as well as through its entire extent from Virginia to Texas, suffers 

 from fires set every spring by grazers for the purpose of improving the scanty herbage growing among the trees 

 of this open forest. These fires run rapidly over the surface stripped by the fires of previous years of any 

 accumulation of vegetable material, without inflicting any immediate injury upon the old trees of the forest unless 

 a turpentine orchard is encountered, when, the resinous surfaces of the boxes being once fully ignited, nothing can 

 save the trees from total destruction. If the mature trees of the forest are not under normal conditions greatly 

 injured, however, by this annual burning of the dead herbage beneath them, the forest itself, as a whole, suffers 

 enormously from this cause. Slight and short lived as these fires are, they destroy the vegetable mold upon the 

 surface of the ground, all seeds and seedling trees, and all shrubbery or undergrowth, which, in protecting the 

 germination of seeds, insures the continuation of the forest. They deprive the soil of fertility and make it every 

 year less able to support a crop of trees, and in thus robbing the soil they influence largely the composition of 

 succeeding crops. Few young pines are springing up anywhere in the coast region to replace the trees destroyed, 

 but where seedlings protected from fire appear upon land long subjected to annual burning, they are usually, 

 although not universally, of less valuable species, and not the long- leaved pine which gives to this forest its principal 

 economic importance. These annual fires are slowly but surely destroying the value of the Southern Pine Belt. 

 They destroy all seeds and seedling trees, the fertility of the soil, and its power to produce again valuable species. 



