News and Notes. 525 



maintain an efficient and competent stafif of fire-rangers, equip- 

 ped with such appliances for fighting, or preventing fires from 

 spreading, as the Board may deem proper, and to provide such 

 rangers with proper and suitable equipment to enable them to 

 move from place to place along the line of railway with all due 

 speed." The Board may also require the company "to maintain 

 an efficient patrol of the line of railway and other lands in the 

 vicinity thereof to which fires may spread, and generally define 

 the duties of the company, and the said fire-rangers, in respect 

 thereof." "The Board may require the company," the clause 

 continues, "to make returns of the names of fire-rangers in its 

 employ in the performance of the above-named duties and of 

 the places or areas in which they are from time to time engaged. 

 For the purpose of fighting and extinguishing fires, the said fire- 

 rangers may follow the fires which spread from the railway to, 

 over and upon the lands to which they may spread." 



Another amendment of much importance is the rendering of 

 the railway company liable for damage to "any property," in- 

 stead of merely for "crops, lands, fences, plantations or build- 

 ings and their contents," by which amendment timber lands are 

 clearly brought among those things for damage to which the 

 company is liable. 



An idea of the active forestry life in Germany may be gained 

 from a table of details in the Zeitschrift fiir Forst- und Jagd- 

 wesen in which we find enumerated 15 forester's associations 

 with 5,483 members. These are all higher grade professional 

 foresters or large timberland owners. 



The oldest, the Badische Forstverein, dates from 1839, the two 

 youngest are the Harz-Solling Verein (1910) and the Deutscher 

 Forstverein (1899) which is a general association with 2,065 

 members, while the others are more or less local. 



Each of them publishes an annual report, among which that of 

 the Schlesische Forstverein (since 1841) at least takes high 

 rank. 



An association of private forest officials in Germany was or- 

 ganized in 1903, which, besides maintaining a school for under- 

 foresters (at Templin) provides occasional courses in special 

 branches for its members. 



