22 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



THE EFFECT OF THE PARTIAL SUPPRESSION 

 OF ANNUAL FOREST FIRES IN THE 

 SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS. 



By Marsden Manson. 



Prior to 1849 the forests and even the foothills of 

 the Sierra Nevada Mountains were annually burned over 

 by the Indians. This process effectually suppressed seed- 

 lings, and, as it had manifestly been practiced for many 

 generations, the forests were mainly composed of old 

 trees, many badly burned at the butt. The scattered 

 groves of Sequoias, with their hoary fire-scarred trunks 

 and devoid of middle-aged and young trees, the clear 

 floor of the Yosemite Valley, and the great forests of 

 sugar and yellow pine, fir, spruce, red cedar, etc., with- 

 out seedHngs or young growth abundantly attest the 

 prevalence of this practice of annually burning off the 

 leaves. These light fires gave open forests through 

 which one could readily see for great distances. 



So impressive were these forest vistas and so ma- 

 jestic were the great boles that poetic and impracticable 

 natures at once accepted the Digger Indian system of 

 forestry as unquestionably the natural and correct one. 

 This impression has been strengthened by two facts : 

 first, the absence of a definite knowledge of what forestry 

 really is; secondly, by the estabhshment of a far worse 

 system than that of the Digger Indian, — namely, the 

 ruthless cutting out of the trees and burning over the 

 areas, designedly, to give better pasture to sheep, or, 

 accidentally, after a heavy growth of young trees had 

 started. 



The writer has been familiar with the forests of the 

 Sierra for many years and has quite recently traveled 

 through several hundred miles of forest areas which 



