232 American Fisheries Society. 



is due in great measure to the large areas of spruce and tamarack 

 swamps yet undrained, as we note wherever these streams have 

 their sources in dried-up swamps, or when swamps were of but 

 very limited area, as in the country just north of Duluth, there 

 deforestation has very materially reduced the water flow, and the 

 streams, formerly very cold, become very much heated during 

 midsummer. 



The removal of the pine forests by the lumbermen has almost 

 invariably been followed by forest fires of great destructiveness, 

 these fires not only sweeping all low-lying shrubs, moss and 

 small trees, but often entering the swamps and either partially 

 or completely killing the timber therein. As an example we can 

 take the great Hinckly fire of 1894. The removal of the white- 

 pine forest had been going on in the Hinckly region for 30 years 

 previously, but serious fires had never gained a footing previous 

 to 1894, when it spread over Pine County clear across to the 

 Wisconsin line. This fire made such a clean sweep that even 

 today, nearly 28 years later, much of the country bears a prairie- 

 like appearance. This fire, however, spared most of the swamps 

 in the eastern part of the county, and the reforestation of the up- 

 lands there has been extremely rapid, so that today we find an 

 extremely heavy growth of poplar and other hardwoods wher- 

 ever the soil will admit of its growth. This country is watered 

 by many small streams fed by numerous small springs, and the 

 borders of all are heavily clothed with brush, or flow through 

 heavy natural meadows, and occasionally through swamps. The 

 swamps lie in such proximity to the spring feeders that at the 

 present time at least conditions have become again much as they 

 are presumed to have been at a time many years preceding the 

 fire, and will probably remain so as long as the swamps which 

 feed the springs are left untouched. 



In this region we see an example of what is to eventually 

 transpire unless our whole system of handling such matters is 

 changed. Big Sand Creek, which has its source in a large swamp 

 northeast of Bruno, flows through a country now rapidly being 

 settled up along about one-half of its upper courses. About four 

 years ago it was decided to drain this swamp, and in due course of 

 time this has resulted in the rapid drying-up of the entire head- 

 waters of the creek. Now no fish occur there except an occasional 

 minnow in some of the pools, though at one time it was a most 



