322 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



guished before any headway was attained or damage done. The reports of these 

 small fires, which are omitted here, speak well for the watchful care exercised by 

 many of the firewardens. 



To many, doubtless, it will seem strange that with so large a burned area the 

 amount of damage is not placed at a greater sum. In explanation it may be said 

 that a large number of the fires occurred, not in any forest, but on tracts of waste 

 land where there was no standing timber. Many of these tracts had been burned 

 over before, some of them repeatedly, until there was nothing left to burn except 

 ferns, wild grass, or the dead, charred stubs that told of former fires. Part of the 

 fires swept over barren plains that for years had produced nothing but weeds and 

 briers. There were wide openings, miles in extent, on which there was little growth 

 aside from the blackberry and huckleberry bushes which tempt the natives to burn 

 these grounds over to increase the yield of wild fruit. Then there were old aban- 

 doned farms and clearings, covered with a scrubby growth of no value, but which 

 took fire quickly through any accident or carelessness. All these burnings, many in 

 number and wide in area, are included in the foregoing tables; and this is why, in 

 some instances, the firewardens report a burned area, but place the damage at nom- 

 inal figures or nothing at all. 



This measure of damages will be better understood if it is remembered that 

 spruce land, virgin forest, in the Adirondacks is worth about eight dollars per acre, 

 that being the highest price paid by the State for large tracts, heavily timbered, 

 well located, and on which no lumbering has been done. With few exceptions, no 

 fires occurred in 1899 on forest land of this character. It should be borne in mind, 

 also, that hardwood forests, from which the merchantable spruce has been removed, 

 is worth about one dollar and fifty cents per acre, the State having bought over 

 100,000 acres of this class of woodlands from various persons during the last four 

 years. 



Now, it is evident that, in estimating the loss per acre, any damage to the stand- 

 ing timber by fire cannot be placed at a higher figure than the combined values of 

 the land and timber; and that the estimated loss should not be computed by any 

 future or prospective values, but should be based on the present market price of the 

 land. 



Instead of underestimating the damages to standing timber, some of the fire- 

 wardens evince a tendency to exaggerate the loss. In some cases the amount of 

 damage reported, when divided by the number of acres burned over, showed a price 

 per acre many times that of the assessed valuation of both land and timber com- 

 bined, — in one case nine times as much. On account of these or similar misstate- 



