"You can get some idea from this: Long Island, N. Y., is a hundred miles long and about twenty across in the widest part. It contains about a million acres. Imagine this covered by solid woods, multiply by fifteen and you would have a good idea of the amount of woodland burned over every year."
"Gracious!" exclaimed the boy. "I should think every tree would have been burned years ago."
"Well, this is a big country," said Ralph. "I figured it out once. The United States is large enough to make six hundred states the size of Connecticut, and have room for twenty-five or thirty more. The state of Texas alone could be cut up into a hundred pieces as large as Connecticut.
"The forest fire is one of our worst enemies. It is far worse than the lumberman, because when he cuts down trees it gives hundreds of young seedlings which are struggling to live in the shade a chance to grow and cover the ground with a new forest; but the fire kills these young seedlings and even burns the seeds that are lying in the leaves waiting to grow. That is one of the worst things to be said against the forest fire."
"Does it kill every tree?"
"Oh, no! Trees like the oak sprout from the old roots, but most evergreen trees are killed outright."
"What happens then?"
"Why, it depends. If the forest is mixed, hard woods and conifers, the hard woods, or some of them, will in time send up sprouts, and where you formerly had a mixed stand, you will in a few years have only hard woods, unless some of the evergreens were not touched. In that case, their seeds will in time replace the old evergreens."
"From forty to a hundred years to have a large forest. Some evergreens, like the spruce, increase in diameter very slowly."