FIRES. 15 
pass ayear unburned. Some portions are burned twice within a year. 
Recurring as they do so often, the fires prevent the accumulation on 
the ground of a large amount of inflammable material, so that they 
are necessarily light and individually do only a small amount of harm. 
The aggregate damage, however, of a large number of fires, extend- 
ing over many years, is enormous, and their effect upon the forest is 
far-reaching. 
This damage shows itself in at least three important ways— 
1. The impoverishment of the soil and the consequent loss in rate of 
growth of the timber. 
2. The prevention of the reproduction of the longleaf pine. 
3. The gradual destruction of the large trees. 
Under present conditions, where the ground cover consists of a 
thin and straggling growth of grass and other herbaceous plants, as 
it does in many places, particularly on steep rocky slopes or on the 
tops of the high ridges, the soil is poorly protected from the weather. 
It washes and gullies readily under heavy rains, and during periods 
of drought it rapidly dries out and becomes hard and compact. It is 
steadily losing in fertility, and much plant food is being used up each 
year by the herbaceous growth which might be used by the pine, 
whose rate of growth is in consequence much retarded. 
The effect of fires upon reproduction is easily seen. Any fire that 
is serious enough to destroy the dry grass is always hot enough to eat 
up all the small pine seedlings less than three or four years old which 
lie in its path. Only rare and isolated spots of small size are found 
which have escaped burning for three or four years, or until the seed- 
lings which may have sprouted upon them have become so stout and 
tall that one ordinary grass fire does not kill them outright. Success- 
ful reproduction of the longleaf pine is found only on such small and 
isolated spots. 
The effect of fires upon the standing timber is so gradual as to be 
scarcely noticeable. After the first few years of its life longleaf pine 
resists fire extremely well, better perhaps than any other species, and 
cases where a tree is killed or burned down by a single fire are rare. 
Nevertheless the timber succumbs to the repeated attacks of many 
fires. Any wound in the bark within 5 feet of the ground which allows 
the resin to run out is an opening of which the next fire will take 
advantage. With each succeeding tire the wound becomes larger, until 
the tree is burned completely through or is so weakened as to be broken 
off by a heavy wind. The effect of fire on the value of the lumber is 
also a factor to be reckoned with. Fire entering a tree redaces the 
grade of the lumber sawed from it, so that a fire-scarred tree is worth 
considerably less than a sound tree. 
If tires were kept off the longleaf pine land entirely, the fertility of 
the soil would be improved, and the rate of growth of the timber 
