70 BULLETIN 1294, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
in this manner, and when computed on a basis of labor expended 
greatly reduce the total cost of the whole operation. 
USE AS AN AID IN GRAZING 
In discussing the historical development of the light-burning 
theory, it was shown that two separate motives have actuated the 
proponents of forest burning. Lumbermen and others, interested 
in thesafety and the preservation of the merchantable timber, regarded 
fire as an active agency of protection. By far the larger number, 
however, have regarded fire solely from its effect on secondary products 
and uses of forests, such as grazing, prospecting, hunting, and ease 
oi travel. Although these two ideas have been greatly confused in 
what has been said and written concerning the use of fire in our 
forests, the two ideas are fundamentally different. Light burning, 
nevertheless, has the perfectly legitimate purpose of protecting mer- 
chantable timber. Some of the lumbermen who pe practiced 
light burning regard destructive fires in the forests with as much 
abhorrence as foresters. It is with the hope of preventing just such 
destructive fires that the practice of light burning has been employed, 
even if mistakenly. 
The other group of forest burners is not interested in the timber, 
but in purely secondary uses of the land. Of this group, unquestion- 
ably, the grazier has been the most active both in actual burning and in 
preaching the active use of fire. From the standpoint of his desires, 
the object of fire is not to protect but to destroy the forest, since the 
types of vegetation in which he is interested occur but sparingly in a 
dense forest and abundantly after the forest is partially or wholly 
removed. ‘The best fire for his purpose is the most destructive, and 
though his purposes have frequently masqueraded under the euphe- 
mism of light or protective burning, they are, in reality, wholly inim- 
ical to the objectives of even the true light burner. 
This group has not only burned forests until they ceased to be 
forests, but have continued the burning of the brush fields that have 
followed the forests, until in some cases a true chaparral type with lit- 
tle value even for forage has finally become established as a result 
of site deterioration. 
The facts concerning grazing and the use of fires may be stated 
briefly, without attempting to recite in detail the specific available 
roofs. 
5 Fully stocked forest, whether even-aged or uneven-aged, with abun- 
dant reproduction, contain little forage, because the trees occupy the 
space to the practical exclusion of other plants. Fires in this type, in 
so far as they remove the timber cover, allow the entrance of other 
plants including those of value for grazing. The present extensive use 
of the virgin forests for grazing is possible only because, as a result of 
past fires, these forests are not fully stocked with timber. Therefore 
the use of fire in timber stands as an aid to grazing is permissible 
only if the highest value is for grazing and not for timber. The 
annual value of the forage crop on an average acre in the California 
mountains is, as a matter of fact, but afractional part of the value of 
the potential yearly timber growth. 
Fires in the brush fields, themselves the result of fire, make it pos- 
sible for stock to graze areas which would otherwise remain unuti- 
lized. Many of the forage brush species, if not burned frequently, 
