It is quite as clearly justifiable to prohibit by law any- 

 thing which greatly endangers the life or property of an- 

 other. No one questions the right of the law to protect a 

 man's building a fire in a city which may burn down the 

 house next door. Strict laws govern the character of the 

 building which may be put in a certain district that other 

 more valuable property may be protected. 



Every fire, whether in a cook stove or the furnace, in a 

 city house endangers other houses more or less, but it is 

 not possible to do without them. Hence certain restrictions 

 are put upon those fires by law. They must be in a certain 

 kind of stove with a certain kind of chimney. In the same 

 way every fire in a wooded claim endangers other property, 

 but some of them are necessary and cannot be prohibited; 

 they can only be regulated by restrictions. 



In other words, there are many cases where there must 

 be a compromise between the protection of property and the 

 necessity for fire. Such compromise the State Forester, un- 

 der the persent law, is authorized to make either directly 

 or through his rangers. There is no such thing as a fixed 

 closed season when slash burning is prohibited. Every case 

 must be decided in view of the conditions and the danger 

 which threatens other property. Because one man has been 

 prevented from burning at a certain time is no reason for 

 all his neighbors to consider that they also have been denied. 

 Conditions may be such that it would be perfectly safe to 

 burn on one claim, and suicidal to attempt it on the neigh- 

 Boring claim at the same time. These conditions will be 

 studied in each individual case by competent men w'ho know 

 their business and who will favor the settler whenever it is 

 possible to do so. 



There will be some whole seasons when it will not be safe 

 to burn at all even with the greatest care. It is hardly ever 

 safe to light a fire in slash and let it go without first taking 

 certain precautionary measures. What these measures are 

 will vary according to conditions and will never be any more 

 inconvenient then is positively necessary. Although some of 

 these measures may seem to the settler to work him a hard- 

 ship he must remember that others have rights as well as 



