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Repeated forest fires have injured enormously 

 the Southern hardwood forests; they have dam- 

 aged millions of trees so that they have be- 

 come hollow or punky-hearted. These fires have 

 burned off limbs or burned into the trunks or 

 the roots and made openings through which 

 many kinds of fungi have entered the hearts of 

 the trees, to doom them to rot and decay. 



Forest fires have been common through the 

 ages. Charcoal has been found in fossil. This 

 has a possible age of a million years. Charred 

 logs have been found, in Dakota and elsewhere, 

 several hundred feet beneath the surface. The 

 big trees of California have fire scars that are 

 two thousand years old. 



The most remarkable forest fire records that 

 I ever saw were found in a giant California red- 

 wood. This tree was felled a few years ago. Its 

 trunk was cut to pieces and studied by scien- 

 tific men, who from the number of its annual 

 rings found the year of its birth, and also de- 

 ciphered the dates of the various experiences 

 the tree had had with fire. 



This patriarch had stood three hundred feet 



131 



