THE RELATION OF FORESTS AND FOREST FIRES 



By Gifford Pinch ot, 

 Forester of the U. S. Department of Agriculture 



The study of forest fires as modifiers of the composition and 

 mode of life of the forest is as yet in its earliest stages. Remark - 

 ably little attention, in view of the importance of the subject, 

 has hitherto been accorded to it. A few observers who have 

 lived much with the forest, such as John Muir of California, 

 have grouped fire with temperature and moisture as one of the 

 great factors which govern the distribution and character of 

 forest growth ; but so little has been said or written upon the 

 subject that the opinion of each man seems to have been reached 

 independently and upon the single basis of personal observa- 

 tion. The documents upon the subject still reside, with very 

 few exceptions, in the forest itself. It is unfortunate that our 

 acquaintance with what might almost be called the creative 

 action of forest fires should be so meager, for only through a 

 knowledge of this relation and through the insight which such 

 knowledge brings can there be gained a clear and full conception 

 of how and why fires do harm, and how best they may be pre- 

 vented or extinguished. 



The records of past fires, written in the forest now on the 

 ground, are often decipherable for more than a hundred years 

 back, and in many cases for more than twice that length of time. 

 Such records throw light on the relations of forests and fires as 

 nothing else can, and are consequently the most valuable of all 

 documents upon the somewhat intricate but most important 

 question of the final effect of fire upon the forest; for we must 

 clearly realize, before the present subject can fall into its proper 

 sequence, that we have not stated everything when we say that 

 '' a given forest is destroyed by fire." The forests which the first 

 white explorers saw as they landed on this continent and grad- 

 ually overran it were themselves the successors of others, which, 

 through thousands of years, were burned down at intervals that 

 we can no longer trace. There is but little of all the vast forest 

 area of this country which does not bear, either in actual scars 

 and charcoal or in the manner and composition of its growth, 



27 393 



