540 



AMERICAN I-ORESTRY 



tims of this thief of the Convolvolus family, which ev- 

 erybody abhors, although the plant is doing nothing 

 more than it was created to do, and what its ancestors 

 had done before it, long ages ago. 



Many elegant vines are known as gourds, and they 

 constitute a separate family, our common Climbing 

 Wild Cucumber being an American example of them. 

 It possesses fine, curling tendrils and leaves that remind 

 one of those of the ivy. The ivies, by the way, are still 

 other vines with most interesting histories ; and the facts 

 that make up their natural history and characters have 

 been woven into prose and poetry since the days of yore. 



We have: 



"Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green 

 That creepeth o'er the ruins old ! 

 Of right choice food are his meals I ween. 

 In his cell so lone and cold." 



and the rest; and it was Gray who left the lines: 

 "From yonder ivy-mantled tower 

 The moping Owl doth to the Moon complain." 



We have a great many more vines that might be de- 

 scribed or at least referred to here; but their histories 

 must be reserved for some other time. 



FOREST FIRES WORST IN SIX YEARS 



ALTHOUGH the forest fire situation in the Northern 

 Rocky Mountains and North Pacific Coast region is 

 far worse than it has been for six years, there is little 

 general appreciation of the fact throughout the country,, 

 reports the National Lumber Manufacturers' Associa- 

 tion. So many hundreds of fires have there been and 

 so many brief reports of them that they have come to 

 be accepted as part of the routine of daily life, just as 

 bloody battles were during the World War. It requires 

 a survey of the voluminous reports collected by the 

 Association at its offices at Washington to get an ade- 

 quate impression of the damage that has been done and 

 the extent of the menace that existed, and to some 

 degree, still exists. It is calculated that the losses have 

 aggregated about $5,000,000. 



Possibly the greatest actual dailiage to virgin standing 

 timber has been outside the boundaries of the United 

 States and on the Canadian side, in the Pacific Coast 

 region. One fire in British Columbia destroyed sixty 

 million feet of the finest timber. So numerous have 

 been the fires in that province that the Lieutenant-Gov- 

 ernor of British Columbia ordered the cessation of log- 

 ging operations. on Vancouver Island in order to release 

 the employes for fire-fighting. 



WTiile there has been no such single case of damage on 

 the American side, the fires have been even more nu- 

 merous and have covered a, larger area, including much 

 of the timber region of eastern and western Washing- 

 ton, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. One hundred and 

 fifty thousand acres have been burned over in Washing- 

 ton, and the property loss in Idaho is placed at $1,500,- 

 000. Some virgin forest and tens of thousands of acres 

 of cut-over lands have been burned and large 

 quantities of second-growth timber have been de- 

 stroyed, as well as great qu;\ntities of logs, many 

 camps and much equipment. While cut-over fire damage 

 does not measure into relatively large sums in terms of 

 present value, it must be remembered that destructive 

 fires on the cut-over lands mean loss of mature timber 

 for the next generation and, sometimes, destruction of 

 the soil. One calculation has it that actual or potential 

 timber sufficient for 300,000 homes has been burned in 

 the last ninety days. 



The season has been exceptionally dry throughout the 

 Pacific Northwest, with the result that fires are very 

 easily started. In one instance a spark from a donkey 

 engine used in logging operations, started a fire which 

 covered 20,000 acres of land, destroyed 15,000,000 feet 

 of saw timber, four logging camps, fifteen donkey en- 

 gines, one locomotive, 35 flat cars, 20 houses and three 

 automobiles. Occasional small showers have sometimes 

 aggravated the situation because of the accompanying 

 lightning and resulting new fires. 



From almost every small section of the Northwestern 

 timber belt come tales of fire after fire and endless ac- 

 counts of the struggles of forest rangers and patrols, 

 loggers, sawmill employes and citizens in general, exert- 

 ing themselves to exhaustion to check the flames. Here 

 are a few recent reports taken at random : 



At Newport, Washington, there were two separate 

 fires. At Potlatch, Idaho, a great fire along Floodwood 

 Creek spread for many days and was fought by 500 

 men. One phase of this and other battles with the fires 

 in northern Idaho was that the fire-fighters went on 

 strike. Two fires east of St. Maries in Idaho, burned 

 over 5000 acres, menaced great white pine holdings and 

 required the heroic efforts of 300 fire-fighters to check it. 



In the Blue River country of the Cascades in Ore- 

 gon, a fire threatened some of the finest timber in that 

 section and was only checked after a desperate effort 

 by a large number of men. There were numerous fires 

 in various other parts of Oregon ; one of them for a 

 time threatening the rich, agricultural Hood River 

 Valley. Many fires were reported in Columbia and Tilla- 

 mook counties. 



In western Cowlitz County, Washington, the Eastern 

 and Western Lumber Company had to suspend all oper- 

 ations and concentrate on fire fighting for many days. 



A fire in the Cascade Mountains, believed to have 

 been started by berry pickers, endangered the Seattle 

 City light and power lines. A bridge was destroyed on 

 the Eatonville Branch of the Chicago, Milwaukee and 

 St. Paul Railway. There were many fires in the Sno- 

 qualmie National Forest, but the worst of them was 

 brought under control after it had burned over 300 

 acres. A fire west of Darrington blackened 25,000 acres. 



