FIREWARDEN'S REPORT. 25 



PROPERTY SAVED BY THE FIRE SERVICE. 



Once more especial stress is laid upon the fact that the value 

 of the fire service is properly measurable in damage prevented, 

 and not alone by offenses punished or fires put out. Again it is 

 possible to make an estimate of what has been accomplished in 

 this respect, though the recital must be prefaced by the state- 

 ment that the figures named can represent a fraction only of the 

 value of the service rendered. The capacity of a forest fire for 

 doing harm is a factor in no way fixed, on which no satisfactory 

 estimate can be placed, and for which no systematic assembling 

 of data is attempted. The figures given, therefore, summarize 

 the statements on reports sent in by local wardens. They are 

 necessarily fragmentary, but since the values are not appraised 

 on the ground they are made amply low to insure no over-valua- 

 tion. With all these reservations it is possible to show that by 

 promptly controlling only 37 fires, at an expenditure of $1,022, 

 property worth nearly $67,000 was saved. This property in- 

 cluded fifty-nine houses and thirty-two other buildings, three 

 cranberry bogs, two of considerable area, five hundred railroad 

 ties, three hundred cords of wood and a large cedar swamp. 

 Among the properties from which fire was kept are named a 

 schoolhouse, two public parks, a large bungalow settlement in 

 North Jersey, and a South Jersey town. Besides this repeated 

 statements occur to show that fires were cut off in time to save 

 timberland of merchantable value. Low as these figures are in 

 comparison with the full results obtained, they are still powerful 

 indicants of the service's worth as a protection within the danger 

 zone of forest fires. 



CAUSES OF FOREST FIRES. 



To prevent fires from starting it is as essential that the cause 

 from which they come be known as for a diagnosis to precede a 

 cure. Though the specific agent escapes detection the agency 

 may more often be determined. A statement of the year's fires 

 by causes appears in Table IV. 



