FUEL-WOODS OF THE FARM 85 
rungs. As live coals form, the birch poles are burned 
through in the middle and fall in the midst of the coals 
and keep on burning. The extension of the fire outward 
is promoted by the upward inclination of their ends. A 
fire of this sort, properly begun, will continue to burn steadily 
through the greater part of the night, without excess of heat 
at the beginning, and without any further attention. 
A woodsman knows there are certain fuels that burn well 
enough but must be avoided in camp: hemlock, for 
example, whose confined combustion-gases explode noisily, 
throwing live coals in all directions. One does not want his 
blankets burned full of holes. And even the householder 
who sits by his fireplace should know that there are woods 
like hickory and sassafras that burn with the fragrance of 
incense; woods like sumach that crackle and sing; woods 
like knotty pitch pine that flare and sputter and run low, 
and give off flames with tints as variable and as delightful as 
their shapes are fantastic. One who has burned knots 
observantly, will never order from his fuel-dealer for an open 
fire “clear straight-grained wood,” even though he have to 
split it himself. 
It has been the wasteful American way to pile and burn the 
tree-tops in the woods for riddance of them, and then to split 
kindlingat home. Witha wood famineat hand we ought to be 
less. wasteful. Half the wood produced by a tree is in its 
branches. Some trees hold their branches long after they are 
killed by overhead shading. Others, with less resistant bark, 
drop them early and in an advanced stage of decay. Fagots 
gathered in the forest are, therefore, quite as different in their 
burning qualities as is the wood of the trunks. It should be 
the object of the following study to learn at first hand what 
these differences are. 
