34 BULLETIN 234, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
fire. Data obtained in actual woods work show that piling brush in 
winter without burning it costs 69 cents per thousand board feet. 
With this method, however, the brush must always be repiled when 
the snow goes off in the spring. Burning as the cutting proceeds 
costs 74 cents per thousand, but is really cheaper than the other 
method because it saves the cost of repiling and of burning the 
following fall, and reduces the cost of skidding. 
In summer cutting, brush is gathered in large piles on the clean-cut 
areas, and in smaller piles in the selection cuttings. Even in the 
latter case the piles are usually made at least 5 or 6 feet high, with a 
comparatively narrow base to permit them to shed rain and snow. A 
small brush pile can only be lighted in the fall if weather conditions 
are right. In the fall of 1911 the first snowfall on the Deerlodge 
National Forest occurred in early October, covering the ground to a 
depth of from 25 to 30 inches, and making it quite impossible to burn 
small piles. Piles of standard size, however, were lighted without 
difficulty. On the French Gulch sale the lighting of such piles under 
approximately 30 inches of snow cost about 6 cents per thousand feet. 
Another difficulty with small piles is the large number which have to 
be lighted — a circumstance which naturally tends to increase the cost. 
At one time it was the practice to fork into the fire the ends of 
sticks and other projecting pieces left in the ring at the outer edge 
of the pile after the fire had burned down. With proper piling, 
however, only a small amount of such material should remain — not 
enough to constitute a fire menace. For this reason it is unneces- 
sary to incur the comparatively large expense of having a second 
crew follow the lighters to fork in the unburned ends. In selection 
cuttings, large piles of brush can be burned within from 5 to 6 feet 
of green trees, provided such piles are covered with a good depth 
of snow. If there is room, however, piles are always built at a 
greater distance than this from the remaining timber. On the whole, 
it has been found that fall is the best time to burn brush, though 
weather conditions in the spring may occasionally be favorable. In 
the spring of 1912, for example, about 600 acres of old brush on 
clean-cut areas, at French Gulch, were burned at a cost of 2 cents 
per thousand feet. 
On the Bighorn National Forest, in Wyoming, where selection 
cuttings have been the rule, the ideal brush pile is considered to be 
one about 8 feet in diameter at the base and about 5 feet high. The 
piles are built tepee fashion, with the larger sticks of unmerchant- 
able material stacked up around the outside. With a cut averaging 
6,700 board feet per acre, the number of brush piles per acre aver- 
aged about 40. In 1910 an area of 1,500 acres was burned on the 
Bighorn Forest at a cost of 6.9 cents per thousand feet; the next 
year 3,700 acres were burned at a cost of 3.8 cents per thousand; 
and in 1911, 4,200 acres were handled at a cost of 3.6 cents per 
