DAMAGES FROM FOREST FIRES. 155 



any importance beyond what may incidentally relate to city paries and 

 limited tracts that may be owned by associations of sportsmen. The 

 term '^ Forst und Jagd''^ (forest and hunting) is inseparably connected 

 with German forest literature and law, and the care and feeding of game 

 is a regular branch of education in the forest schools of that country. 

 The government derives some revenue from the sale of hunting licenses.^ 



DAMAGES FROM FOREST FIRES. 



The losses resulting from running fires are within the observation of 

 all, as no district of considerable extent in the country has been entirely 

 free from them, and in very many places their effects are sadly apparent 

 in the blackened trunks of dead trees, and the prevalence of a youuger 

 growth of rapidly-growing but inferior kinds of timber in the place of for- 

 ests that were in full maturity and of great value. One of the theories ac- 

 counting for thepriiiries, ascribes themtotbefires annually set by Indians^ 

 for driving game, or for favoring the growth of grass that should attract 

 deer and other game to this pasturage; and so far as relates to "oak 

 openings," " barrens," and the prairies east of the Mississippi, this theory 

 has the strongest ground of probability. However this may be, we have 

 these facts before us, that scarcely a j ear passes without the occurrence 

 of forest fires of sufficient extent to attract public notice; that they are 

 particularly prevalent in seasons of protracted drought, and more fre- 

 quent from year to year as these droughts become more frequent and 

 more widespread in their effect. It may be well to notice some of these 

 cases of destruction, and some of the means by which it has been 

 proposed to prevent their recurrence. 



Fires occur more or less extensively among the timber in the mount- 

 ain regions of the Territories, and some of these have proved exceed- 

 ingly destructive. Early in 1860 and in 18G2, fires of unusual extent 

 and severity overran portions of the country westward from Laramie 

 plains, now Wyoming Territory, spreading with such fearful rapidity 

 that neither man nor wild beasts could escape, and burning not only the 

 timber, but the turf and vegetable matt'er in the soil. Seedling- pines 

 sprang up in parts of this burnt district in great abundance, with a 

 mixture of cottonwood and other species, but so dense that a large num- 

 ber died out when three or four years old. 



The summer and autumn of 1871 were unusually dry, with prevailing 

 southwesterly winds, the rain-fall being less, and the evaporation more, 

 than the general annual average. These conditions favored. the spread 

 of forest tires in the Eocky Mountain region, and throughout tbe North- 

 western States, which will long be remembered, like the Chicago fire of 

 the same year, for their extreme severity and great extent. The- fires 

 in Wisconsin and Michigan were altogether unprecedented, and swept 

 not only through forests but even cultivated farms and through villages, 

 taking everything in their course. Including the surface overrun in the 

 prairie region as well as in forests, tbe area swept by the fiames in that 

 year must have been many thousands of square miles.^ The pecuniary 

 loss no one has ever been able to estimate, as no data were collected. It 



'lu 1851-'52 there were b7,235 licenses sold ; in 1856 there were 91,491, the increase 

 being about the same as that of the population. The percentage of hunters was 0.478, 

 or about 1.76 per cent, of the males over 20 years of age. 



2 In British India the hill people have a tradition that the burning of forests has a 

 salutary effect. This is kept alive by actual experience of the increased healthfulness 

 of the districts after fires. — {Indian Forester, ii \>. 871.) 



3 Paper by Prof. I. A. Lapham. litport of Chief Signal-Officer, War Department, 1872, 

 p. 186. 



