74 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
While farmers and owners of woodlands must be thankful to 
have an end thus put to the exemption claimed, under a judicial 
decision given in 1894, to the non-liability of railway companies 
for damage caused by engine-sparks (though owners of traction- 
engines on roads have always been held liable for similar damage), 
the Act hardly seems to meet the necessities of the case with 
regard to railway-lines passing through large woods of coniferous 
trees growing on dry soil. In plantations of this description, fires 
might very easily do vastly greater damage than would be fairly 
compensated by £100; and the Act seems, therefore, to be 
unsatisfactory in not arranging for reasonable steps being taken 
under it, conjointly by the landowner and the railway company 
in such cases, through the medium of the Board of Agriculture. 
The means of obtaining some such security could be easily 
provided by an additional clause to Section 2, such as the 
following :— 
In the case of extensive woods or plantations, the owner of the same may 
submit to the Board of Agriculture proposals for their fire-protection, together 
with an estimate of the cost of carrying out the proposed protective measures 
along the railway line; and on approving the proposals as reasonable and proper 
precautions, the Board of Agriculture may give sanction for the carrying out 
of such measures to whatever extent may be considered necessary, and may 
pass orders that the railway company shall contribute not more than one-half 
of the estimated or of the actual expenditure thereon, whichever may be the 
less in amount. 
This seems only a reasonable precaution, because there is no 
fear whatever that any landowner will go to unnecessary expense 
in fire-protective works of this description merely because he may 
possibly force the railway company to contribute thereto one-half 
of the estimated or the actual expense, whichever may, on the com- 
pletion of the work, prove to be the less in amount. It would be 
much the same in effect as the customary power in Scotland with 
regard to the sharing of the cost of march-fencing and repairs to 
boundary fences between any two adjoining properties. And it 
would just be as little liable to abuse, more particularly if the 
Board of Agriculture—which ought soon to be further enlarged 
into the “ Board of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry,” with 
an Assistant Secretary in charge of a special Forestry branch— 
had such powers as above indicated for amending, sanction- 
ing, and passing orders on the estimates for fire-protection 
submitted to it. 
