42 INJURY BY SMELTER WASTES. 



A trip was made up Foster Creek for about 5 miles to a point 

 approximately 12^ miles from the smelter. For the first 3 miles, 

 on the east side of the creek, practically all of the red firs were dead 

 or dying. Evidences of fires about twenty, twenty-three, and fifty 

 years ago were found at various points in this territory, but it was 

 evident that they were not responsible for the injury to the red firs 

 for the following reasons: (1) The red firs were still dying in the 

 summer of 1908, at least twenty years after any fire, and (2) the 

 small branches remained on the dead trees, which would not have 

 been the case if they had been killed twenty years before. The fire 

 of fifty years previous evidently killed the lodgepole pines and only 

 scarred the red firs, shoAving that if a fire was just intense enough to 

 kill the former, it would probably only injure the latter. This, of 

 course, is largely due to the greater thickness of the red fir bark. 

 From the end of the third to the end of the fifth mile Foster Creek 

 Canyon was evidently visited by a fire approximately twent3^-two 

 years ago, which killed practically all of the timber. 



A careful examination was made of the mountain, which stands 

 between Warm Springs and Foster creeks. This mountain is ap- 

 proximately in sees. 7, 17, and 18, T. 5 N., R. 12 W., and is about 12J 

 miles from the smelter. About twentv-two years ago the same fire 

 which ran across the northern end of the Foster Creek basin also ran 

 up the western slope of this mountain, badly burning a strip about 

 200 yards wide (all red firs and lodgepole pines being killed in this 

 narrow path), and then passed down the eastern slope of the moun- 

 tain into Foster Creek basin. This fire spread, though with less 

 intensity, over most of the remaining sections of the mountain, and 

 scarred the timber, but did not kill it. The marks of fires which 

 occurred approximately fifty and a hundred years ago were also noted 

 at various points on the mountain. The lodgepole pines all over this 

 mountain appeared to be uninjured, except on the narrow strip pre- 

 viously mentioned. The red firs were nearly all either dead or badly 

 injured. A large part of the northern slope of the mountain was 

 entirely untouched by fire, and yet practically all the red firs were dead 

 or dying. On the western slope the red firs were severely injured, 

 but not so badly as on the eastern slope. On the western slope they 

 were dying, but on the eastern slope nearly all were dead. The con- 

 clusion that it was not fire that killed most of these red firs, but some 

 cause acting during the summer of 1908, when this mountain was 

 investigated, is reached for the following reasons: (1) At the north 

 end of the mountain, where there had been no fire, the red firs were 

 dead and dying; (2) the small branches remaining on large numbers 

 of the dead trees showed that they could not have been killed more 

 than eight or ten years before the inspection was made, entirely too 

 late to be attributed to the fire of twenty- two years previous; (3) the 



