NORTH AMERICAN FORESTRY. 



5 



trees, though what remains of the virgin forests is now comparatively 

 only a remnant. 



Four years ago I spent some time inspecting these forests in the 

 Great Smoky Mountains near the frontier of the States of North 

 Carolina and Tennessee. The principal species of tree in that region 

 is the Tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipifera, which produces the lumber 

 known on the American market as Yellow Poplar. It is a tree that 

 attains to large proportions, reaching a girth in some cases up to 

 25 feet, and I myself measured many of 15 feet. There one also 

 meets with a great number of species of Oak, whose identity in the 

 winter season I was not able to determine, and with these are inter- 

 mixed Chestnut (Castanea dentaia), Beech {Fagus americana) and 

 species of Hickory, Ash, Lime, Horse Chestnut, with a thin sprink- 

 ling of Black Cherry (Prumis serotina). The last tree attains to a 

 height of over 100 feet, but its maximum girth seems to be about 

 8 feet ; it is abundant nowhere, and is getting scarcer. At the 

 present time it is one of the most valuable timbers on the American 

 market, being equalled only by Black Walnut and Pencil Cedar 

 (Juniperus virginiana). The condition of things in the south-east 

 of the United States as regards forest fires is very different from 

 that which prevails in the coniferous forests of the Northern United 

 States and Canada. In a hardwood country, forest fire, if it occurs at 

 all, takes the form of a low, harmless burning of the dead leaves 

 lying on the surface of the ground, stems being practically unaffected, 

 even seedlings no more than an inch or two in thickness being hardly 

 affected. Of course fire may smoulder for days in an old fallen stem 

 or even in the decayed centre of a standing tree, but, on the whole, the 

 damage is practically negligible. Things assume a worse aspect, 

 however, when fire follows lumbering operations, because then the 

 ground is covered with what the Americans call " slash," that is " top 

 and lop," and as this material burns readily, a fire running over such 

 ground will destroy all the smaller class of trees that the lumbermen 

 have thought fit to leave standing. 



Although hardwoods are by far the most important feature of 

 south-eastern American forests, there is a certain number of Conifers, 

 and, in fact, even in the extreme south of the Appalachians, where 

 they terminate on the borders of Georgia and Alabama, one finds some 

 of the finest White Pine that now remains on the American continent. 

 In the same region, especially on north slopes, are to be found consider- 

 able groves of Canadian Hemlock, which there appears to attain to 

 its maximum size (120 feet high and 15 feet in girth), although practi- 

 cally on the outside fringe of its southern geographical distribution. 

 The tops of the highest hills in the Appalachians are either bare of 

 trees — a rare condition of things — or are covered with pure stands of 

 Ahies Fraseri, which, like all the Silver Firs, is in America popularly 

 called Balsam. In the same district one occasionally comes across 

 Tsuga caroLiniana, a tree of no economic importance. The Conifers 

 just mentioned, with here and there specimens of Pinus Taeda and 



