GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF FOREST TREES IN CANADA. 295 



ance which a large tract of country is to wear for the next hundred years 

 or more is completely changed. Even greater tracts of country than this 

 have been known to be burnt up at a single conflagration. One of these 

 fires, which started west of Lake Superior and swept round its north side 

 about 1845, was ascertained to have travelled about 300 miles in less 

 than a week. A few years later another fire extended from the country 

 north of Lake Huron into the Ottawa valley, a distance of some 200 miles, 

 in the space of a few days. Three or four years ago, forest fires, hundreds 

 of miles long, swept through Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, de- 

 stroying several hundreds of human lives, and millions of dollars' worth 

 of timber. Some of the great fires of the almost boundless forests farther 

 north seem to have been even more extensive, from all that we can learn 

 from the natives in regard to them. 



The wild animals appear to understand the significance of the roar- 

 ing noise and the clouds of smoke in the sky in advance of these con- 

 flagrations. The terrified deer, bears, wolves, foxes, lynxes, and hares 

 flee for their lives, followed by multitudes of the small fur-bearing 

 animals ; but as a rule all are soon overtaken and destroyed. Should any 

 of the larger beasts be fortunate enough to reach a lake or river in time, 

 they may escape along with the beavers, muskrats, otters, and minks, 

 which seldom stray far from the water. The birds fly up into the air in 

 confusion in advance of the wall of fire, and appear to become stifled by 

 the heat and smoke, and after fluttering about for a few minutes they 

 fall into the flames and perish. 



These great fires come to an end in different ways. It may be by a 

 change in the wind, followed by a deluge of rain, or by coming to a wide 

 extent of previously burnt country, or of small deciduous trees, or to a 

 chain of large lakes. 



EVOLUTION OF THE NEW FORESTS. 



The dead trunks of the larger trees generally stand for many years 

 after the fire. In the summer following one of these conflagrations, the 

 blackened ground becomes partly covered by a growth of herbaceous 

 plants, berry bushes, and shoots from the roots and butts of deciduous 

 trees which have retained some vitality, besides numerous small seedling 

 trees. The huckleberry bushes, which are very common for the first few 

 years, especially on rocky, siliceous ground, bear abundant crops of fruit. 

 They have sprung from large old roots which are almost everywhere 

 present in the thick woods, although their tops are quite inconspicuous, 

 and bear few or no berries. In fifteen or twenty years the ground is 

 covered with poplars, birches, willows, etc., to a height of about thirty feet. 

 By this time the dead trunks of the old IruU have lost most of their 

 branches, and the smaller ones have fallen down. If we look under this 

 growth, we shall discover many healthy young conifers overshadowed by 

 the more rapidly growing deciduous trees. At the end of about fifty 

 years the conifers are everywhere showing their heads, in the form of 

 sharp apices, their dark green colour contrasting strongly with the 

 lighter shades of the other trees. In the race to get above the deciduous 



