Plate VII, Fig. 1 A Mountain Trail Built for Fire Patrol 



cost has been higher than this, it has 

 heen attributed either to poor work in 

 piling" or to inefficient management in 

 the work of burning. The average cost 

 of both piling and burning should range 

 in coniferous forests between ten and 

 fifty cents, and as the lumbermen be- 

 come more experienced in performing 

 the work the cost will be correspond- 

 ingly reduced. 



In the logging operation shown in 

 Plate IV, where the brush was burned 

 just after a slight snowfall under par- 

 ticularly favorable conditions, the actual 

 cost of burning was only a fraction of 

 one cent per thousand feet. No watch- 

 ing of the piles to see that fire did not 

 run was necessary ; it was simply a case 

 of walking from one pile to another and 

 starting the fire. 



In some coniferous forests careful 

 records were kept of the area actually 

 burned over. Where the stand per acre 

 ran from 10,000 to 50,000 feet per acre, 

 the aggregate area burned over by the 

 brush fires was found to be approx- 

 imately seven per cent of the total area 

 cut over in the logging operations. 

 Where the brush is burned as the log- 

 ging proceeds, the percentage of the 

 area burned over is less. 

 660 



Disposal of Hardwood Brush 



Most of the work of piling and burn- 

 ing brush has been in coniferous for- 

 ests. Of late, however, there has been 

 considerable discussion of burning the 

 slash after logging in hardwood forests. 

 So far as the author is informed, sys- 

 tematic brush burning after hardwood 

 logging has not been conducted any- 

 where on a large scale or in a manner 

 to justify a judgment as to its prac- 

 ticability. Hardwood tops are neces- 

 sarily large, heavy, and awkward to 

 handle. The cost would be much 

 greater than in coniferous forests. It 

 is probable that lopping and scattering- 

 will be used rather than piling and 

 burning. 



The author has conducted some ex- 

 periments in the burning of hardwood 

 brush in the second-growth forests of 

 New England, where the wood was util- 

 ized to about three or four inches, so that 

 the amount of brush to be disposed of 

 was much less than would have remained 

 from logging old timber in the ordinary 

 manner. The results of these experi- 

 ments showed the average cost of pil- 

 ing and burning to be between ten and 

 twenty-five cents per cord. In this class 

 of material with good organization the 

 cost would probably not exceed ten to 



