266 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



the rot continues from year to year until badly scalded. In a year or so the bark 



the whole heart wood may be rotted, spalls off, showing bare heart wood 



In such cases the tree surgeon gets to underneath ; the tree has only about half 



work and saves the tree for many years the original number of sap fibres avail- 



of usefulness and vigor, for, while a able to feed it and therefore cannot 



tree rotten at the heart will be as healthy circulate its sap from roots to crown 



and vigorous as ever in its growth, it is freely, and soon becomes peaked and 



mechanically weak, subject to insect diseased. In time it may heal up the 



and fungus attack and likely to be scar, grow bark over it and put down 



windthrowii any time. some roots on this side again; more 



Fire is an enemy that will not bother often a set of coppice shoots will start 

 the owner of a hardwood forest to any from the root collet, and instead of one 

 great extent, except in the matter of tree you have a spindly sapling and a 

 ground and brush fires, but as soon as lot of outlaw shoots, which fight with 

 he plants or assembles a forest of ever- it for light and moisture. We have one 

 greens he is in danger of fatal crown patch of forest in Interlaken, burnt over 

 fires from almost the first year. During by one of these "harmless" ground 

 the early years of a plantation the fires, in which every single sapling 

 danger is of a brush or field fire, which of shows a scar as big as a saucer, and on 

 course would kill the young transplants ; the big trees some of them exhibit a 

 and after the sixth year the crowns scald the size of a dinner plate. They 

 get to such a size as to easily communi- will all be taken out in time; at present 

 cate a fire even on six foot spacing. Fire we have planted some three-inch nur- 

 and logging lanes should be left every sery white ashes and liriodendrons here 

 four hundred feet in such a forest, and and there in the patch, which will be 

 these should be twenty-five or thirty the dominant trees in a few years, and 

 feet wide during the first twenty years then the burnt growth will be taken out 

 of the life of the forest, and later widened entirely as none of it will ever make 

 to 50 and 100 feet. In planting for a good, sound trees. Wherefore, prohibit 

 twenty-five-foot fire lane, leave forty- brush fires in your woodlands, and be 

 five feet between the border transplants keen to put out any accidental ones, 

 to allow for side growth into the lane Very good apparatus for the purpose, 

 from both sides,' or branches, which consisting of asbestos fire shields, pack- 

 will easily attain ten feet in length sack fire extinguishers, etc., are now 

 in the first fifteen years. A fifty-foot being made commercially so there is no 

 European larch border around each necessity to go to the trouble of home- 

 section is a good thing, not only because made equipment. I have already pub- 

 it is the best way to grow such an lished what can be done with dynamite 

 intolerant tree as larch, but because in fire fighting, and would advise reserv- 

 it aids materially in the effectiveness of ing a set of tree-planting cartridges, all 

 a fire lane in a forest of spruce or pine, wired up for use in emergency brush 

 the larches being less vulnerable to fires, as they often occur when sufficient 

 crown fires. help cannot be gotten' to the scene of the 



In the hardwood woodlot the fire brush fire quickly enough to save many 



most often met with is the ordinary leaf valuable saplings. I knew one leaf fire 



or brush fire. These seem harmless that covered half an acre of ground in 



enough, and might even be suggested ten minutes. 



as a means of cleaning out underbrush The problem of light in the forest is 

 cheaply, but as a matter of fact they a fascinating one, and any forest owner 

 are extremely harmful. At first nothing can get a good deal of pleasure out of 

 unusual is apparent but some blackened the study, using an ordinary photo- 

 bark at the stumps of the trees. If graphic actinometer to make his own 

 the bark is thick and the tree old, no measurements. My goodfriend, Raphael 

 particular harm has been done, but the Zon, of the U. S. Forest Service, has 

 saplings of three to six inches diameter published an excellent bulletin on the 

 of all species will have been found to be subject, which everyone should read to 



