^omt So^tBi ^ie(ox2 



stumps are now the newel-posts in a rustic 

 stairway. 



Near my home on the slope of Long's Peak 

 are the records of an extraordinary succession 

 of forest fires. During the last two hundred and 

 fifty years eight large fires and numerous small 

 ones have occurred. Each left a blacky fire-en- 

 graved date-mark. The dates of some of these 

 fires are 1675, 1707, 1753, 1781, 1842, 1864, 

 1878, 1885, and 1900. Each fire burned over 

 from a few hundred to a few thousand acres. In 

 part, nature promptly reforested after each fire ; 

 consequently some of the later fires swept over 

 areas that had been burned over by the earlier 

 ones. Here and there a fire-scarred tree, escap- 

 ing with its life, lived on to preserve in its rings 

 the date of the conflagration. In one old pine 

 I found seven widely separated scars that told 

 of seven different fires. In addition to the rec- 

 ords in isolated trees, there were records also 

 in many injured trees in groves that had sur- 

 vived and in ragged forest-edges where forest 

 fires had stopped. An excellent check on the 

 evidence given by the annual rings of fire- 



127 



