450 REPORT OF THE FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 



of fire. A careful and thorough lopping of the tops reduces this danger to the 

 minimum. When the tops are not lopped, they are held up from the ground 

 by the limbs underneath, and usually at some time during the early spring or 

 summer the small branches become exceedingly dry and an easy prey to fire. 

 When the forest is in this dangerous condition, fires are often started by the 

 careless dropping of a match, or the throwing away of the stump of a lighted 

 ciga^. Once such a fire gets started it is almost impossible to combat it 

 successfully. The flames run swiftly from one top to another. Sheets of flame 

 leap up through the branches of the young trees, which usually catch fire and 

 are killed. Often, when the ground cover of a forest is very dry, it is almost 

 impossible to check a forest fire entirely until it has run out of the territory of 

 old cuttings and slashes. 



For these reasons it is strongly advised that the tops of all trees cut in 

 lumbering on these townships, not wholly broken by the fall, be sufficiently 

 lopped to bring them to the ground, or so that the first winter's snow will crush 

 them to the earth. They will then absorb the moisture and become so wet and 

 soggy that decay sets in much more quickly, and they soon get in such condition 

 that they will not burn in an ordinary summer. The danger from fire is thus 

 materially decreased. 



The cost of thoroughly lopping tops varies with the conditions on different 

 tracts. Usually it is from two to three cents per standard log, varying according 

 to stand of timber, the diameter limit to which cutting is made and the degree 

 of thoroughness with which it is done. Lopping tops is a useless expense unless 

 it is thorough. 



The smaller the diameter limit to which timber is cut in the top of a tree the 

 less the cost of lopping tops. For example, it is plain that if the tops are cut 

 off at a diameter of eight inches, more branches remain to be lopped than if 

 they had been cut at a five-inch diameter. On the same general principles, the 

 larger the stump diameter limit the less will be the cost of lopping tops per 

 standard, since the lopping costs no more for a tree containing two to three 

 standards than it does for a tree containing only one standard, cutting to the 

 five-inch diameter limit in both cases. Therefore the cost of lopping tops on 

 these tracts, if cut to a twelve-inch diameter limit, breasthigh (which is practically 

 fourteen inches on the stump at the cutting point), would be considerably less 

 per standard than if the trees were cut to a ten-inch diameter limit, as there 

 would be a smaller number of tops from which to cut the limbs, as well as less 

 lopping in proportion to the yield. 



