416 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY 
the approximate limits of the great fire. Accordingly I wrote Mr. 
E. Hutchison, of Dougilastown, well-known as one of the lead- 
ing lumbermen of the Miramichi, and placed my problem before 
him. He has had the kindness to reply fully. He gives it as his 
opinion that the extent of the fire has commonly been exagger- 
ated ; that Derby, for instance, was partially, if at all, burned, and 
that the limits of the fire were about from Portage River south to 
the main Miramichi, and from the Square Forks of Sevogle east 
to Bartibog, with a tongue to near Grande Dune. 
His evidence is derived from the relative ages of the timber 
trees cut within and without those limits. When I called his 
attention to the positive statements of Cooney, seeming to show 
a much greater extent for the fire, he replied that he was aware 
of this discrepancy, but that his judgement was based upon the 
unassailable testimony of the age of trees standing on the areas 
in question, and that, while the matter is somewhat complicated 
by the occurrence of local fires, it is possible to trace the limits 
of the Great Fire with some accuracy in this way. 
He called attention to the well-known fact that Chatham was 
not burnt, and adds that the occurence of abundant and large old 
logs all along the south side of the Miramichi, including Cains 
River, Barnaby River, Black River, and Napan, show that there 
could have been no extensive fires at that time south of the Mira- 
michi, and that if the, great fire did cross the river at all, it must 
have been only locally and without doing any material damage to 
the woods. 
Further, since much of Derby, together with the basin of the 
Renous, Dungarvon, and Bartholomews Rivers have all produced 
immense quantities of logs much older than could have grown 
since the great fire, there could have been no extensive burning 
in that region as Cooney implies. The same is true of the dis- 
trict east of the Bartibog. 
With reference to the age of these logs he adds. “Black 
spruce, which is our principal export, does not make logs fit to 
cut much under ioo years, and I have counted 265 rings on a 
black spruce. The white spruce and pine grow quite twice :^s 
fast.” 
