402 THE RELATION OF FORESTS AND FOREST FIRES 



and measurement of every tree on many hundred acres of fir 

 timber in various parts of the Puget Sound region, and a study 

 in the Olympics, combine to show them practically absent in 

 the shade of their elders. In the latter region, as I had occasion 

 to say in a report (dated January 26, 1898) to the Secretary of 

 the Interior on the condition and proper management of the 

 national forest reserves, " Continuous stretches of miles without 

 a break were covered with a uniform growth of Douglas fir (red 

 fir) from two to three feet in diameter, interspersed with numer- 

 ous rotting stumps of much larger trees bearing the marks of 



REDFIR FOREST ON LAND ONCE RAVAGED BY FIRE 



fire. The young firs were entirely unscarred, but charcoal was 

 found at the roots of some specimens which had been thrown 

 by the wind. . . . Charcoal was found directly beneath a 

 growing cedar tree four feet in diameter, under which a hole had 

 been excavated in the course of lumbering operations. This 

 mass of evidence acquires a crucial importance with relation to 

 the forest from the fact that in my ten days' visit to this region 

 I did not see a single young seedling of Douglas fir (red fir) 

 under the forest cover, nor a single opening made by fire which 

 did not contain them." In a word, the distribution of the red 

 fir in western Washington, where it is by all odds the most 



