156 



Canadian Forestry Journal, October, 1913 



ing from railroads under construction was 

 less than three square miles, similarly fires 

 resulting from operating railroads were 

 kept under strict control. 



'There were between ten and eleven 

 thousand permits issued to settlers for the 

 clearing of land; in all cases the areas to 

 be burned over were first inspected by fire 

 wardens and no fires resulted from this 

 cause. The sentiment in British Columbia 

 towards the permit law is extremely fav- 

 orable and this law has worked out so sat- 

 isfactorily that it is to be recommended 

 to the other provinces of the Dominion. 

 Between 800 and 900 fires occured during 

 the past summer, all but 95 were exting- 

 uished by the fire wardens without any 

 extra cost; the average cost of extinguish- 

 ing the 95 for which assistance was re- 

 quired was less than $50.00 per fire. This 

 small cost of fire fighting is due to the 

 system of patrol employed in all districts 

 where the fire danger was great, to the 

 use of boats on all water ways which en- 

 abled wardens to get to fires rapidly, and 

 to the fact that the fire hazard is being 

 constantly decreased through the cleaning 

 up of roads, burning of slash and the mak- 

 ing of fire breaks which is lieing carrie'd 

 on under the direction of the Forest 

 Branch. 



'The Forest Branch still continues to re- 

 ceive applications for the purchase of 

 small areas of timber; eight parties are 

 now in the field cruising timber for sale. 

 During the past two or three months the 

 dullness of the lumber business has inter- 

 fered with logging on several of the tim- 

 ber sales and has made it advisable to de- 

 lay the completion of pending timber sales 

 if the timber is to be sold for its possible 

 market value. The largest transaction 

 now pending is the sale of 500 million 

 feet of timber chiefly hemlock to the Brit- 

 ish Columbia Sulphite and Fibre Company 

 for the manufacture of chemical pulp, the 

 cutting period on this sale will be between 

 twenty and thirty years and the officers of 

 the Forest Branch are finding it difficult 

 to devise a system of revising the stump- 

 age price periodically in order to protect 

 the Government interests and to be fair 

 to the Company. A very careful exam- 

 ination is being made of the tracts to be 

 cut over in order to render possible the 

 framing of regulations which will protect 

 and encourage the reproduction of the 

 forest. This sale when completed will 

 embody practically all forest regulations 

 and should be of interest in Eastern Can- 

 ada where sales of pulp timber to compan- 

 ies are frequently taking place. • 



* The Government has recently inaugur- 

 ated a new policy of handling grazing on 

 public lands by the permit system, the 

 administration of grazing on all unalien- 

 ated public lands in the Province has been 

 placed in the hands of the Forest Branch. 



There are large areas in different portions 

 of the Province where there are almost un- 

 limited possibilities for summer grazing 

 and some possibilities for winter stock in 

 the open. An investigation is now being 

 made of this by the Forest Branch and 

 reports will soon be issued. 



'Dr. H. N. Whitford has recently ar- 

 rived in Victoria and will co-operate with 

 the Forest Branch in completing a recon- 

 naissance of the Forest reserves of the 

 Province. 



'J. M. Swaine, Assistant Dominion En- 

 tomologist, has in co-operation with the 

 Forest Branch examined the chief lumber- 

 ing regions of the Province in order to ob- 

 tain if possible information of any dam- 

 age by forest insects. This investigation 

 has resulted in the discovery of serious 

 damage by bark beetles in yellow pine but 

 up to date no other timber of commercial 

 importance has been found to be affected. 



'All logging operations in British Co- 

 lumbia are carried on under authority 

 from the Forest Branch and in order that 

 forest officers may keep in sufficiently 

 close touch with the work in the different 

 operations, prevent trespass, undue waste 

 and illegal handling of timber, instruc- 

 tions have recently been issued to have all 

 logging operations inspected at least once 

 in three months and reported to the Chief 

 Forester. ' 



THE DANGEROUS CIGAEET. 



A leading Ottawa lumberman, whose 

 firm has suffered rather heavily from fire 

 in the past season, in speaking to The Can- 

 adian Forestry Journal called attention to 

 a new danger which threatens not only the 

 timber owner but also the owner of pro- 

 perty in towns and cities. This danger is 

 the great increase of the cigaret habit. 

 Our railways are now practically wholly 

 constructed by foreign laborers who are 

 inveterate cigaret users. The cigaret re- 

 quires much more constant lighting than 

 the old fashioned pipe, and the burning 

 matches are thrown carelessly down 

 wherever the man happens to be with the 

 result that fires get into the slash and 

 from that into the green timber along the 

 line of the railway. An even greater 

 danger arises from the fact that when the 

 man is through with the cigaret he throws 

 the glowing stub down with equal care- 

 lessness, and fires start as a result. In 

 towns and cities cigaret smokers throw 

 burning stubs down gratings, over fences 

 or into boxes or barrels. Inflammable ma- 

 terial is likely to lie in such places and 

 thus our flre losses in towns as well as in 

 the forest rise to a proportion that is noth- 

 ing short of criminal. 



