Spring Burnings

Because it is easier to fire a field of winter grass in the spring than it is to plow the stubble under, and because "burning off" brings sweet young grass for cows to eat, many a U. S. husbandman is responsible for brush blazes that sometimes sweep into forest fires. Spring burnings last week sent greedy flames licking through richly wooded areas in Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, eating up many a sawmill and farmhouse in their way, leaving charred dead acres in their wake. Virginia's Natural Bridge National Park lost 9,000 acres of timber; the Shenandoah National Park, 2,000 acres. Sizzling and snapping up Black Mountain in the Purgatory Range, flames leapt over into Kentucky forests, destroyed a lumber camp. Villagers in widely scattered mountain districts were alarmed. Firefighters deployed by thousands along the Alleghenies, prayed for rain.

Chapin Jones, Virginia State Forester, asked Governor John Garland Pollard to urge his people to extraordinary care in setting blazes. In Georgia, where officials have been trying to educate people to adopt the plow-under method of spring clean-up as a means of soil enrichment, Governor Lamartine Griffin Hardman pressed his campaign for fire prevention among all planters.

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