Excerpt from Forest Fires: Their Destructive Work, Causes and Prevention Nothing better illustrates the state of public Opinion in North Carolina on the subject of forest fires than that the fact that the State law prohibiting such fires, except under certain conditions, has remained on the statute books practically unchanged and unenforced for more than a century. And nothing more forcibly illustrates the destructive work of these fires than the fact that whereas the long-leaf pine, which has for so long a time supplied both lumber and naval store products, a century ago was a com mon tree throughout the whole of eastern North Carolina, now it is almost unknown north of the Neuse river; and south of this river, at its present rate of destruction, in two decades more it will cease to be a tree of economic importance. Of course the lumbermen have made great inroads on the long-leaf pine forests. But even of the full grown trees the fires have destroyed more than the lumbermen have cut; and so completely have these fires destroyed the voung growth of long-leaf pine that in many counties scarcely a specimen can now be found to indicate where once grew valuable forests of this tree. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.