The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-05-14
TREES AND THEIR ENEMIES.
 Part H.

One of the most frequent causes of forest. fires is the grazing of animals on forest land. To improve the grazing, the owners of flocks and herds often fire the grass or other fodder plants, sometimes with the intention of de- stroying the forest itself, and thus in- creasing the area of the pasturage, but more often to improve temporarily the quality of the feed. The majority of these fires do not kill the old trees, but
 by destroying the seeds and the young trees. they do great injury to the forest, and finally to the fodder plants them selves. And to understand the enor- nous amount of damage wrought by this one cause, we must remember that vast areas are burned over every year, in nearly all parts of the United States where trees grow, and it is fact well known to foresters that hundreds of thousands of acres in the West, where sheep are in the habit of grazing, would be covered by forests to-day, if 1t were not for the repeated burnings to which the ground has been subjected.
 In forests where grazing is permitted, much damage is often done by tramp ling. Heavy animals, like horses and cattle, pack the soil with their hoofs and destroy the rootlets of small trees, but these animals, having big, broad feet, do comparatively little harm. Sheep on the other hand are very harm ful, particularly where the soil is Nose, and upon steep slopes. Their hoofs be- ing small and sharp, they cut into the soil and powder it up, at the same time breaking and cutting the young growth to such an extent that flourishing forests are often completely destroyed. Nor does the danger of tramplings stop with the destruction of the forest itself. We should take warning by the disas- ters which followed the grazing of sheep in the Alps of southern France. There, first of all, the forests were de- stroyed; then followed the grass which had replaced the forests, and the soil was then left fully exposed to the rains. The result was a succession of floods, and the force of the water carried down enormous quantities of stones, and spread over what had been fertile fields, depopulating many prosperous valleys. The cost to the French people has al- ready run into tens of millions of dol- lars, and the end is not yet. The loss is out of all proportion to any gain which may have been derived from the mountain pastures, and even the sheep owners themselves are losers in the end, as the sheep industry In that re- zion has been utterly ruined.
 Then the grazing animals do further harm by browsing on the young growth, and on the tender shoots and branches of the larger trees, often mak- ing them unsightly or unsound. Such damage is confined chiefly to the forest of broad trees, as sheep and cattle seldom touch conifers if they can get anything else to eat. Goats are not common in the United States, but when damage than either sheep or cattle by grazing in the forest. Hogs, though less harmful, still do their share of mischief, by eating up the seeds and nuts. Birds and squirrels do some harm at times by eating great quanti- ties of seeds, and mice and porcupines kill many trees by gnawing the bark.
 Insects are always at work in the forest, and sometimes their ravages re- suit in serious loss. During the last twenty years, the larva of saw-f1y has been eating the foliage of the larch trees in the Adirondacks to such effect that nearly every full-grown tree oi this species has been killed in that re- zion. The work of the elm beetle, the gipsy moth, and many other insects, is too well known to require comment
 Many other enemies have the trees amongst them being the fungili, which are ever ready to attack a fresh wound of any kind. Their ravages may ofter be prevented by dab of paint or tar which will exclude the air and the spores with which it is laden. The winG sweeps through the forests, sometimes doing good by removing the old and dying trees, or by pruning the healthy ones, and sometimes doing harm by throwing down those which have not yet reached maturity. The influence ot snow, also, is two-fold. It does great good by protecting the soil and the young trees, and it often does greai ] harm by bending, and breaking, and