THE SfRUCE INVESTIGATION. 



213 



festing insects and other enemies of the forest, which within a 

 few years as we have had abundant evidence in the destruc- 

 tive invasions of the pine bark beetle are capable of devas- 

 tating the timber on hundreds of square miles. (Fig. IX). 



This natural process of destruction of timber by wind, by 

 fire, by disease and by insects, was continued, varying in its 

 extent with the dry and wet, cold or warm seasons. To this 

 was added the early and continued practice b} 7 Indian and 

 white hunters, of burning over extensive areas to facilitate the 

 procuring of game. Thousands of acres of these "hunter's 

 burnings" may be found now in the heart of the spruce region, 

 denuded of every vestige of timber. I have n^self observed 

 single sections of over a thousand acres thus denuded, upon 

 which there was not a trace, not even a stump of the dense forest 

 that once stood on the ground, the greater portion of the surface 

 being covered either with a thick mass of ferns, mountain black- 

 berry or blue-grass. 



MOUNTAIN PASTURES. 



Another destructive agency has been the clearing of large 

 tracts in the midst of the wilderness of the spruce area by means 

 of a system known as "hacking," for the purpose of obtaining 



Fig. X. Mountain Pasture with young spruce and white thorn, the latter 

 pruned by cattle; altitude 3,000 ft.; near Pigeon Roost, Grant County, 



