Report of the Forest Commission. 101 



Pacific Coast. 



(Boston Transcript, September 15, 1894.) 



"Investigations made by the Department of Agriculture appear to show 

 that most fires of this kind are caused by farmers who in clearing land allow 

 the fire to escape into the forest. Careless hunters come next in degree of 

 responsibility for such disasters. They leave fires burning in abandoned camps 

 because they do not care to take the trouble to put them out. Railways, of 

 course, are accountable for the destruction of great areas of forest annually. 

 They should be compelled to use spark-arresters, and to pay for the harm they 

 do in this way. Forest fires are frequently occasioned by no human agency, 

 but by lightning; and it has been alleged that they are sometimes caused by the 

 spontaneous combustion of decomposing pyrites. 



"Forest fires and their effects may be studied to the greatest advantage in 

 that great belt of coniferous trees which stretches through the British posses- 

 sions in the northern part of this continent 4,000 miles from the east coast of 

 Labrador to the Rocky Mountains, continuing beyond to Alaska. This belt, 

 averaging about 700 miles in width, consists chiefly of spruce, tamarack, pine, 

 fir and cedar. The open spaces are covered with reindeer mosses, which in 

 summer are as dry and inflammable as tinder. The Indian hunter of that 

 region, knowing how destructive forest fires are to the animals on which he 

 depends for food and furs, takes all possible care to prevent them. The 

 country has not been invaded to any extent by white men. Yet fire runs 

 through every part of it at one period or another. It is said that these fires are 

 caused by lightning usually. 



"The best authority on those great woods of the north is Robert Bell of 

 Ottawa. He asserts that fires are actually necessary for the reproduction of 

 some of the trees. The cones of the Banksian pines never open unless they are 

 scorched. But when fire sweeps through the forest, the cones of this species 

 gape, and the seeds which they contain are scattered by the wind. It is this 

 kind of pine that first clothes areas that have been reduced to nakedness by the 

 flames . 



" Fire may be set in those northern woods at a season when it will not run, 

 but it is astonishing how long it will smolder in the deep moss and under logs 

 and roots, until, after weeks or perhaps months, a dry time comes and a favor- 

 ing wind fans it into activity. The heaviest rains and the snows of a whole 

 winter sometimes fail to extinguish or smother these smoldering fires. The 

 trees newly killed by fire are quickly attacked by boring beetles, which, find- 

 ing thus an inexhaustible supply of food, swarm in the forests of that region, 

 the creaking noise of millions of their larvae making an incessant chorus. 



" 'Picture to yourself," says Robert Bell, ' a vast area of extent practically 

 unlimited, densely crowded with spruce, balsam, tamarack and Banksian pine^ 

 The trees are so close together that their branches touch and intermingle. The 

 ground is deeply covered with dry moss. After prolonged hot weather and 

 drought the moisture becomes thoroughly dried out of leaves and branches, 

 leaving the resin and turpentine ready for ignition. All the conditions 

 are now favorable and only await a spark of fire to give rise to the 

 wildest scene of destruction conceivable. When fire has once started the 

 pitchy trees burn rapidly, and the flames rush through the tops and high above 



