WEST VIRGINIA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



285 



In 1883 the Southern Pine Beetle, (Dendroctonus frontalis 

 Zimm.) began to infest the timber, killing thousands of trees 

 during the decade which followed. In this same year the tim- 

 ber was cut on the West Virginia Central Railroad's right of 

 way from Fairfax, in Grant county, to Davis, and the railroad 

 completed to the latter point in 1885. This railroad furnished 

 an outlet for the great quantity of timber and admitted num- 

 erous portable and stationary saw mills which have continued 

 to operate to the present time. The timber where the town of 

 Davis now stands was cut in 1885 and the large band saw mill, 

 which has cut over 400 million feet of softwoods, was erected 2 

 years later. 



Those who visited this locality prior to the introduction of 

 these disturbing influences would hardly recognize it now. Dr. 

 William C. Rives, an eminent naturalist of Washington, D. C, 

 who made some field observations in the vicinity of Davis in 

 1891 and again in 1897, makes the following comment: ''The 

 destruction of timber which had already begun before the time 

 of my first visit had progressed with startling rapidity, during, 

 the six years that had elapsed, and instead of the more or less 

 unbroken sea of green tree tops formerly visible, the eye now 

 rested upon a country disfigured by prostrate logs stripped of 

 .their bark, misshapen and unsightly stumps, and dead trees 

 blackened and destroyed by fire. Railroads for getting out the 

 timber had been forced into the heart of the woods. Saw mills, 

 tanneries, pulp mills and lumber camps stand where the timid 

 deer formerly came to slake its thirst and the ponderous and 

 unwieldy bear found an unmolested abode. It is for the most 

 part requisite to travel for many miles from the railroad to 

 find a place to which the wood cutter has not yet penetrated. ' '* 



Lumbermen and Forest Fires. 



Timber conditions have continued to grow steadily worse, 

 not only in the locality referred to above, but in nearly all parts 

 where timber has been cut. All that was left by lumbermen on 

 large areas has been consumed, in many places down to the bare 

 rocks, by the oft-recurring forest fires. Viewed from any high 

 station in the vicinity of Davis or Thomas, the whole region. 



^The AuTc, Vol. XV, No. 2, April, 1898. 



