either piled in heaps and burnt, or rolled away for the purpose of making the zigzag log fences necessary to keep off the cattle and sheep, which are allowed to range at large. The timber being thus removed, the ground requires little further preparation for the seed which is to be sown in it, than merely breaking the surface with a hoe or harrow. Plentiful crops of corn or potatoes may be raised for two and often for three years successively after the wood has been burnt on it. The stumps of the trees are allowed to remain in the ground until they are sufficiently decayed to be easily removed. The roots of spruce, beech, birch, and maple, will decay in four or five years; the pine and hemlock tree require a much longer time. After the stumps are all removed the land is turned up with the plough, and the same system of agriculture is practised as in England. Destructive fires often occur in the woods, sometimes from the effects of lightning, but more frequently arising from the carelessness of travellers and wood-fellers, who light fires at the roots of trees, and take no trouble about extinguishing them afterwards. If the season happens to be dry, the fire soon communicates to the surrounding trees, and from thence spreading through the forest, it rages with a fury and rapidity that we can scarcely form a conception of in European countries. Let the reader, if possible, fancy the devouring flames curling around the stems of the lofty pine trees, rushing up to their dark tops, and ascending to an immense height amongst the dense clouds of black smoke arising from a whole forest on fire. At each moment the falling trees come down with a thundering crash, while sparks and splinters of burning wood, driven on the wind, spread the destruction far and wide, “Through the grey giants of the sylvan wild.” Human means are unavailing to check the progress of the conflagration; onward it rushes, extending to every combustible substance, and spreading desolation in its path until it is quenched by rain, or until it has devoured every thing between it and the cleared lands, the sea, or some river. In the year 1825 the country to the north of Miramichi was visited by one of the most disastrous conflagrations that history has ever recorded;[6] upwards of a hundred miles of the shores of Miramichi were laid waste by the fire, which extended to Fredericton, where it destroyed the governor’s residence and about eighty other houses; and carried its ravages northward as far as the Bay de Chaleur. [Illustration: _Fredericton—New Brunswick._]