How the Forests Suffer from Fires 123 



H. W . Fairbanks 



The dead stubs of a once beautiful forest. 



destroy his own fences and buildings and, sweeping on, ruin 

 those of his neighbors also. 



Few people have perished from fires in the West, for. there 

 the forest regions are generally thinly inhabited, but in 

 some of the Eastern and Northern states there have been 

 terrible fires that have destroyed whole villages together 

 with their inhabitants. 



In many mountain regions of our country there are large 

 areas now covered with useless brush where there were 

 once valuable forests. In regions where the lumbermen 

 have not utterly destroyed the forests, but have left some 

 seed trees, the forests will come back again, but in these large 

 burned areas conditions are not favorable. The destruc- 

 tion of the humus as well as the trees has been so complete 

 that the seeding of a new forest is slow work. It may be 

 hundreds of years before the trees will spread over and again 

 take possession of the waste land. 



