290 FOREST FIRES. 



isolated spots on the dark devasted expanse where the raging 

 element had already spent its fury and passed on. One would 

 suppose that such fires ought to utterly destroy every tree in 

 a forest ; but here, strange to say, comparatively little damage 

 is done to the timber. 



In Indian forests, after the trees have attained a certain 

 size, they seem, as a rule, to become almost fireproof ; for 

 notwithstanding the annual burning of dry grass and brush- 

 wood on the mountain-sides, you seldom or never see those 

 tracts of charred and withered timber-skeletons so constantly 

 met with in the American backwoods. I therefore very much 

 doubt whether burning the undergrowth is here so pre- 

 judicial as is generally supposed. In the forests of " sal " 

 and other hardwood trees of the Terai and Dehra Doon, the 

 ravages of white ants, especially where the undergrowth is 

 left unburnt, are, I am sure, more injurious to well-grown trees 

 than is the slight scorching of their outer bark by fire. More- 

 over, the fire to a great extent arrests the progress of destruc- 

 tion by the ants, and the clearance of useless scrub-jungle 

 by burning gives freedom for the better development of the 

 more matured timber. The exclusion of the natives, too, from 

 the forests, in which, since the time when nature first planted 

 the trees there, they have had the privilege of grazing their 

 herds, has caused an amount of discontent, not to say distress, 

 with which the doubtful advantage of such a proceeding is 

 hardly commensurate. To this may be added the increase of 

 malaria caused by the rank vegetation being left to rot on the 

 ground from year to year. By all means protect the saplings up 

 to a certain age ; but would it not be better, after the timber 

 has reached a fair size, that the villagers should be permitted 

 to burn the undergrowth in order to provide fresh young 

 fodder for grazing their herds on as heretofore ? The manure 

 from the ashes and cattle ordure, and the clearance of the 

 undergrowth, would tend to improve the trees, which would 

 then be tall and strong enough to resist the ravages of the 

 fire, though not those of the white ants, which would be 



