6o 



ARHORICULTURE 



arc using oil for al)uut one-third of the 

 trafHc. 



The local division now has sixty-three 

 oil-hurning" engines. There remain 

 eiq'hty-throe yet to he converted. It is 

 estimated that within eight months all 

 of the engines will have been converted, 

 and the use of coal on the Western divi- 

 sion permanently abandoned. During 

 the month just passed the oil burners on 

 the local division traveled a distance of 

 a])proximately 200.000 miles. The coal- 

 burning engines passed over 306,752 

 miles of track. The gain of this year 

 over last is something over 50,000 miles 

 per month, which is a fairly accurate in- 

 dex to the increase in lousiness. It re- 

 quires on an average 1,000 gallons or 

 about twenty-four barrels of oil for every 

 100 miles, as compared to five tons of 

 coal. The saving on every hundred 

 miles by using oil ranges from $16 to 

 $20. The total saving for the 200,000 

 miles traveled by oil-burning engines rep- 

 resents from $36,000 to $40,000 per 

 month. 



The company has expended upward 



oi $5,000,000 for oil. The inve>tmcnt is 

 a~ good one, however, as the saving ef- 

 fected will have paid for the enormous 

 expenditure long before all the engines 

 have been converted into oil burners. On 

 the Western division alone the saving per 

 month, when all the engines have been 

 converted, will approximate $75,000. 

 When the other coast divisions use oil 

 exclusively the total sum saved will be 

 u])ward of $100,000 per month. 



The enormous saving arising from the 

 use of oil is sufficient almost at the pres- 

 ent time to provide a million in dividends 

 annually. To the saving effected by the 

 use of oil in locomotives must be added 

 the saving arising from the oil-burning 

 passenger and freight boats. 



The opinion of those best informed is 

 that it will take ten months and possibly 

 a year for all the locomotives on the Pa- 

 cific coast to abandon coal. All the en- 

 gines which go into the repair shops at 

 Sacramento, Los Angeles, or Oakland, 

 come out as oil burners. There are very 

 close to 150 oil burners in use on the 

 three divisions. 



Preserving Forests by Fire. 



SCIENTISTS say that in order to 

 preserve the forests from fire 

 pine needles shall be allowed 

 to accumulate, that dead brush shall 

 not be burned out, that fallen trees 

 should not be disturbed. The prac- 

 tical mountaineer says: "Burn; and burn 

 often, in order that this accumulation of 

 dead matter shall not become so great as 

 to cause the destruction of the trees when 

 a fire sweeps through the mountains.'' 



There is but one practical way of pre- 

 serving the forests of the Sierras from 

 being destroyed by fire. The remedy 

 may appear upon its face to be severe, 

 but nevertheless it is the only one, and 

 it is by the use of fire. If the soldiers, 

 under proper instruction, would set fire 

 to the dead matter each year there would 

 be absolutely no danger of the destruc- 

 tion of the forests by fire, for the reason 

 that I have already stated. This was the 

 practice of the Indians in former days. 



and uniil the soldiers came fires were of 

 sufficient frequency to keep the dead mat- 

 ter destroyed, and there w-ere no signs 

 lin the mountains of such fires save the 

 occasional scorching of the outer bark 

 'of the large trees. Now it is an easy 

 matter to find where recent fires have 

 completely destroyed the forests over 

 large tracts of ground. The remedy 

 which I would suggest, then, is that 

 these accumulations of dead matter be 

 (burned by the soldiers or others working 

 under the supervision of j)er.sons familiar 

 with such work. The expense attend- 

 ant upon this would be a trifle compared 

 ■with the vast loss which will certainly 

 accrue if the present condition of things 

 continues. — Sau Francisco Call. 



What folly, what idiocity. Florida has 

 experienced this kind of forest protection 

 -for all time — the Indians burned the ac- 

 cumulated vegetation each year — pioneer 

 settlers continued it : not to protect the 



