FOREST FIRES. 289 



soon as that crop was taken oflf, another crop sprung up of 

 rock maple, which is a beautiful lot to-day. I am a little 

 over sixty years old, and within my memory there have 

 been three distinct species of wood grown upon that soil. 

 First, beech ; second, dog cherry ; and now, maple almost 

 big enough to tap for sugar. 



Now, to go back to the forest fires. If some way can be 

 devised to make people who are malicious or careless enough 

 (whether wantonly careless or not) to cause a fire in the 

 woods, responsible for those fires, by any law passed by our 

 legislature, I for one shall raise my hand for such a law to 

 be passed to make those setting fires, whether carelessly or 

 maliciously, accountable for the damage. 



Mr. Stedman. I live in a section where we suffer very 

 materially from forest fires, and where the difiiculty is in- 

 creasing year by year. In the town of Chicopee are two 

 large manufacturing villages in which are many people not 

 fully employed, perhaps, or boys who go into the woods 

 chestnutting in the fall of the year, or hunting, and without 

 any purpose on their part fires are set. I know that they 

 have been set apparently for the purpose of clearing the way 

 for the finding of chestnuts, by carelessness in the use of 

 firearms, and sometimes, we have reason to think, just for the 

 spf)rt of seeing the fire. One of those tAvo villages has a 

 section of plain land, which is covered with trees of fifteen, 

 twenty or twenty-five years' growth, twenty and thirty feet 

 high. Last spring I had a wood-lot of thirty acres of this 

 kind of timber burned over completely. Now, how are we 

 to get at the remedy, I do not know. It would seem that 

 there is nothing to be done but to set a watch. 



If Mr. Myrick will allow me, I will make a little correc- 

 tion of one statement that he made. It Avas Omer Field, of 

 the north family of Shakers, who set out the trees of which 

 he spoke, and there are acres of that white-pine lumber 

 growing which has been raised much cheaper than our friend 

 (Mr. Manning) spoke of from the eastern part of the State. 

 They simply gathered the seeds and sowed them on this 

 almost worthless land. Instead of being six feet apart, 

 there is such a forest that you can hardly walk through un- 

 less you hold on to your hat, and almost your head. They 



