FOREST, FIRES.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 19, Issue 1252, 19 February 1872, Page 2

FOREST, FIRES.

[NEW YOJtK, ALBUM.] It w a remarkable coincidence that tlie> two great fires of the century should have occurred at the. name time and in. the same neighborhood. The greater prominence of- Chicago, made us for a time ignore the losses in Michigan, and Wisconsin* Uuib the papers are now filled with long lists of the dead and injured, whole communities haying; been obliterated. It is a frequent thing for the forests to be on. fire in the autumn; indeed, so common is it, afarmer always explains any undue haziness in the atmosphere by the assertion that "the woods are on fire." Some philosophers think the treeless, condition of the prairies of the. West ai\d of the great natural meadows of South America is owing to this, and, not to any inherent defect of the soil. One curious fact connected with this is. that the vegetation which springs up. the season after is always diiferent from,. its predecessor. "Where pines wave oak : will follow, and where spruce was. maples come up, and do so in such myriads that imagination is. puzzled to tell where they came from. This will be the case undoubtedly next year in Michigan. The Belgian consul has called a meeting of his countrymen to take measures for relief of those communities of Belgians which were settled in the region of the great fire, and. we presume his example will be followed by the Dutch consul. The Hollanders had several large and nourishing villages in that neighborhood ; so much so was this the case that in one place it was much more easy to be. understood in Butch than English. Two newspapers were printed in this language in one of the villages which were consumed.