46 BULLETIN 1294, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
late fall, at a time when only the top layers of litter are dry and the 
fire will burn slowly. (Pl. XI, fig.1.) The ordinary practice is to set 
the fires along ridges so that they will spread downhill and thus avoid 
the damage frequently resulting from fires that run up the slopes. 
The most elaborate of the plans followed includes scraping away the 
litter from most of the merchantable trees and even cutting brush 
and reproduction that stand close to the trees. Another plan, exten- 
sively used in flat country, involves constructing cleared fire lines 
around each 160 or 640 acre tract, felling of snags By hand near these 
lines, and burning in toward the center from the lines. Following 
these preparations, burning is practiced in the summer at night. 
Others who have employed light burning have merely set fire to the 
forest litter without any J atiak preparatory measures to protect the 
trees or control the fire, allowing the fire to run at will unless improve- 
ments were in jeopardy. 
An elaborate plan proposed, but never put in practice, contem- 
plated first the burning of snags, down logs, and extra large accumula- 
tions of débris, followed by a second treatment of the same area, in 
which ridge tops were burned, and a third treatment of upper slopes 
and minor ridges; finally came the burning of the gulches lower slopes 
and other unburned portions. A rotation of from 5 to 25 years was 
planned, depending on the degree of cleaning up accomplished by the 
first treatment and the rate of accumulation of new inflammable ma- 
terial. This scheme (1/4) recetved wide publicity, but was never actu- 
ally put into effect, and remains merely as one of the few published 
complete expositions of the light-burning technique. 
HISTORY OF GROWTH AND PRACTICE 
At the time the large private holdings of timberland were acquired 
in California 20 to 30 years ago, public opmion in the pine region 
regarded fire as a benefit rather than adetriment. Tradition credited 
the Indians with periodic burning of the forest; the crude forms of 
agriculture, such as grazing, employed fire to induce the growth of 
forage; in fact, nearly every industry of the early days used fire 
promiscuously. The simple needs of the population for wood were 
not seriously affected by forest burning, and forest lands as a source 
of timber were in people’s minds to only a very limited extent. It 
can hardly be doubted that the public point of view which the early 
lumberman and timber owner found colored their own ideas and 
approved general forest burning as an accepted practice of forest-fire 
protection. 
With evidence of past fires in the forests, and the fact that splendid 
forests had persisted through these fires, it was logical for the timber 
owner also to argue that periodic burning was not only desirable but 
necessary as a protective measure against the terrifically destructive 
crown fire high many of these lumbermen had learned to fear in the 
Lake States. Any measure that might prevent or mitigate such 
catastrophes in their new possessions was grasped eagerly. Deeply 
concerned with maintaining the integrity of their investment, it 
seemed to the owners of large areas of timberland that to reduce 
the amount of inflammable material in the forest was absolutely essen- 
tial; and that if this reduction could be accomplished, the safet 
of their investment, the merchantable timber, would be assured. 
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