The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-05-07
TREES AND THEIR ENEMIES
 Part 1


 There are few people Sd unintelligent that they do not appreciate, in some measure, the value of forests, but per- haps there are fewer still who fully ap- preciate the gigantic importance of the part trees play in the progress and maintenance of civilization. The fact is that without trees our present ciyili- zation could not have been developed for ages, and perhaps 1t could never have been developed at all. In many parts of our own country, for example, farming operations would be inpossi- ble bu tfor the trees, such is their in fiuence upon the streams. They regu- late the water supply and tend to pre- vent both floods and drought. They supply fuel one of the greatest ne- cessities of life, and they supply the lumber for the building of cities. bridges, railroads and ships. Yet most of us never stop to think that the num- Der of our trees is limited, that we are using them up far faster than they are being replaced either by man or Nature, and that unless some means can be found either to prevent the wholesale destruction of lumber which is now going on. or to offset it by replanting large areas with young trees, timber famine must result at no very distant day. We of this generation may never feel it except in the increased price of lumber and fuel, but those who come after us will curse our neglect and want of foresight.
 Of course it has become necessary that vast forests of fine trees be cut every year; gigantic industries, in which millions of dollars and the ern- ployment of hundreds of thousands of men are involved, make it impossible to stay the hand of the lumberman. But in the very interest of these great in dustries destructive numbering should be everywhere guarded against. As often as not. the owners of the forests are not to blame for the destructive numbering which goes on by their or ders: they are driven by excessive taxation on their forest lands to cut and sell their timber as fast as possible, that they may realize on their property once for all, and without the slightest regard for the future. As soon as the trees are gone, the owners refuse to pay the taxes any longer and the al- most valueless land goes back to the State. With reasonable taxation, these owners would have been able to cut the trees. carefully, and in such a way as to insure the preservation of the forest with view to obtaining valuable crops of timber in the future. Thousands and thousands of square miles of land which should now be covered with thriving young forest trees are simply so much wilderness, and many and many county. which with reasonable taxation might have been prosperous to-day. is poor because it's natural wealth of timber has been squander- ed.
 An enemy almost if not quite as de- struetive as bad numbering, is the forest fire, which destroys not only the timber lands, but very often dwellings and human lives besides. When con ditions are favorable to such fire, 1t .somestimes reaches appalling propor- tions. Such was the case with the Miramchi fire of 1925, which, in the short space of nine hours, destroyed a belt of forest eighty miles long by twenty-five miles wide, killed almost every living thing, including the fish in the streams, over an area of more than two and half millions of acres, swept away a number of towns burned d 1c l. 1rsII hundred and sixty people. The Peshti- go fire of 1871 was still more disastrous, covering, as it did, two thousand square miles in Wisconsin, and Involving the loss of many millions of dollars and the death of nearly fifteen hundred per- sons. This fire burned slowly for sev- eral days at first, and might have been put out easily enough before the high wind came and lashed it to fury be- yond all control. When forest fires first begin they may often be beaten out with green branches. Those which have made headway, but which are burning along the ground only, may often be checked by the digging of a trench, and this method is particularly recommended where the floor of the forest is dry and deep and peaty, in which case the fire is apt to shoulder far beneath the surface and break out again long after it seems to have been extinguished. But the worst forest fires are those which run along the ground and through the tops of the trees at the same time. First becoming intensely hot on the ground, the fire runs up the dry trunks of the trees, and then it becomes one of the most de- structive forces known. Travelling often faster than a man can run, it sweeps everything in it's path, build ings, fences and animals being con- stunned like tissue paper in furnace. With the wind in it's favor there is but one thing which can etnn .l hior fro nf