92 Report of the Forest Commission. 



{From the Philadelphia Press, November 26, 1894.) 



The terror of South Jersey is a forest fire, one of those awful conflagrations 

 which every spring, before there is any budding vegetation, sweeps with 

 fiendish devastation miles and miles of the great region known as ''The Pines." 

 Sometimes houses and barns are swept away in the flames and frequently 

 villages and hamlets that are surrounded by woods are endangered. This is 

 why the forest fire is so terrible. Many square miles of great pines and oaks 

 are annually burned, and April, May, September and October seem to be the 

 months of fires. 



How they originate is often mysterious, though occasionally it is by sparks 

 blown from chimneys or from brush fires, while many, no doubt, are the work 

 of incendiaries. But whatever their origin, they are alarmingly frequent and 

 all are terrible. They are seldom checked save by waterways and rainfalls, 

 and occasionally one will burn itself out by a shifting of wind, but nearly all 

 the ruralists become fire-fighters. Fighting forest fires is hard work and often 

 hot work. Occasionally there are commendable exhibitions of bravery and 

 heroism. Seldom, however, are human lives lost, although animal nature 

 furnishes a great many victims. 



Fires in The Pines must be seen to gain a true idea of what they really are, 

 and why so terrible? Imagine, if you can, a flying ember lodging in the dead 

 leaves that carpet a great forest of stately, odorous pines, and then smolder- 

 ing, perhaps, for hours until a whiff or two of air fans flames into life — flames 

 that leap playfully about from leaf to leaf for a time. They seem very 

 innocent, and some die so easily in the capricious breeze as to suggest no feel- 

 ing of alarm. In time they noiselessly reach a towering pine that stands near 

 and search around its base until an exuding line of sap is found. Up this the 

 flames leap like lightning, and then go scurrying out on each waving branch 

 and in an instant the tree is all aflame. 



The fire has begun. The heated air leaves a vacuum that is almost instantly 

 filled and the flames leap from tree to tree until the forest wears an infernal 

 appearance. All animated nature quickly takes the alarm, and ahead of the 

 fire flees a confused lot of rabbits, opossums, raccoons, squirrels, occasionally 

 a deer, and all the furred denizens of the wood, terror-stricken and all running 

 a neck-and-neck race with death. The air above is filled with birds, many 

 screaming in terror and all flying for life. Occasionally some of these get 

 lost in the smoke and fall suffocating to be consumed in the angry flames. It 

 is wonderful to see how quickly the denizens of the forest take the alarm and 

 how universal it is, even snakes and tortoises joining in the wild race for 

 escape. Many of the creatures, of course, become exhausted and are overtaken 

 by the seething sea of flame. In their flight there is no exhibition of the pre- 

 datory instinct, and the rabbit and his enemy, the weasel, run side by side. 



While the flames are raging in the tree tops tire, also, is sweeping the ground, 

 withering everything touched by its breath, and leaving in its wake the seared 

 and blackened skeletons of bushes and young trees, with here and there the 

 half -burned bodies of animals. Forest fires usually travel with great speed if 

 the trees be the resinous pines, for, besides their inflammable material, among 

 the tops the air is freer than below, and the breezes cause the flames to make 



