254 



AVOOD AND FOREST. 



During September, 1908, forest fires raged in Minnesota, Michi- 

 gan, Wisconsin, Maine, Few York and Pennsylvania. The estimates 

 of loss for northern Michigan alone amounted to $40,000,000. For 

 two weeks the loss was set at $1,000,000 a day. The two towns of 



Fig". 107. Effect of Fire and Wind. Colorado, f. v'. Forest Service. 



Hibbing and Chisholm were practically wiped out of existence, and 

 296 lives were lost. 



Certain forest fires have been so gigantic and terrible as to become 

 historic. 



One of these is the Miramichi fiie of 182,5. It began its greatest de- 

 struction about one o'clocl< in the afternoon of October 7th of that year, at a 

 place about sixty miles above the town of Newcastle, on the Miramichi River, 

 in New Brunswick. Before ten o'clock at night it was twenty miles below 

 New Castle. In nine hours it liad destroyed a belt of forest eighty miles long 

 and twenty-five miles wide. Over more than two and a half million acres 

 almost every living thing was killed. Even the fish were afterwards found 

 dead in heaps on the river banks. Many buildings and to\vns were destroyed, 

 one hundred and sixty persons perished, and nearly a thousand head of stock. 

 The loss from the Miramichi fire is estimated at $300,000, not including 

 the value of the timber. (Pinchot, Part I, p. 79-80.) 



