INTENSITY AND VIOLENCE OF FOREST FIRES. 417 



graziers have iu obtaining a crop of green grass in the height of 

 the hot weather, four or five weeks or even more before the begin- 

 ning of the S. W. monsoon (see p. 38, para. 2). The next is tho 

 increased facility for moving about in a burnt forest and for look- 

 ing out for forest produce and game. In respect of this latter the 

 burning of the grass and bushes reduces the amount of cover, there- 

 by confining the animals to a few isolated spots of limited extent. 

 Then again, firing is the easiest and cheapest means of clearing away 

 from near cultivation low thick undergrowth giving cover to des- 

 tructive animals. The reduction of cover also lessens the risk to 

 human life from wild beasts. And so on. Besides these direct 

 inducements to fire the undergrowth, which are a perpetual menace 

 to the safety of our forests, a very fruitful source of danger is the 

 constitutional indifference of the millions of strolling smokers of 

 the Indian pipe or chilam of earthenware or rolled-up leaves, the 

 use of which requires nothing less than a piece of burning char- 

 coal or cowdung. 



Besides preventing the dangers and disasters enumerated above, 

 fire-conservancy has the effect of reducing both the density and 

 height, that is the actual quantity, of the grass produced each year. 

 New shoots come up in less abundance and grow up with less 

 vigour on the clumps still bearing the old decomposing shoots of 

 preceding years, and many stumps thus grow gradually weaker and 

 ultimately die. Moreover the dense matted rotting mass formed 

 by the dead grass is very unfavourable for the production and 

 survival of new seedlings of herbaceous species in general and of 

 the tender single-bladed grass seedling in particular. Indeed, it is 

 an established fact that in many cases certain species of grasses 

 are to a great extent killed out, the survivors being generally short 

 and wiry kinds and forming more or less isolated clumps. This 

 diminution of the natural crop of grass is most conspicuous in dry 

 climates, and in stony, naturally dry soils. In a moist climate 

 and iu rich moist soils it is hardly perceptible, owing probably to 

 rapid decomposition and to the immediate washing away, by the 

 heavy rain, of the deleterious products of decomposition. 



The necessity of fire conservancy in regard to its influence on 

 the distribution of species will at once appear from a perusal of 

 pp. 36-42. 



SECTION II. 



Intensity and violence of forest fires. 

 The intensity and fierceness with which a forest fire burns de- 



