Post 24605
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Elsewhere the forests were dim with smoke, and on the Sierra during these centuries the heroic “big trees” received many a scar from fire. But not until 1441 did fire again try this veteran. Soon after this burn was healed there came a third fire. This was less injurious than the preceding ones, for the wound that it inflicted healed in half a century.
Higher and more stately the tree grew, and in 1729 it attained the age of two thousand years. At the age of two thousand and eighty-eight years the fourth fire attacked it. This fire burned an eighteen-foot scar upon the trunk of the old tree. In 1900, after the lapse of almost a century, only a small part of this wound was overgrown. This year, 1900, came the reaper, the axeman, who laid low this aged and monumental tree!
What starts forest fires? Some are started by lightning; others are kindled by meteors that are flung from the sky, or by fire that is hurled or poured from a volcano; a few are caused by spontaneous combustion; and many are set by man. Down through the ages primitive and civilized men have frequently set fire to the forest. These fires are set sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally. The forest has been fired to drive out game, to improve pasturage, to bewilder the enemy during war, and to clear the land for the plow.