Charges of dynamite are placed in holes three feet deep at 

 intervals of fifteen feet each way, and touched off with fuses 

 in the ordinary way, certain sections at a time. While there 

 is an area of only three feet in diameter of dirt thrown up 

 directly over each charge, the explosion cracks and loosens 

 all the dirt and breaks it up. 



Manufacturers of explosives wanted the government to ex- 

 periment, but there were no funds available and the powder 

 companies made a proposition that the explosives would be 

 furnished free for experiments and tests. 



While the initial expense -is now estimated as about $15 an 

 acre, this may be reduced, and it will take experiments to 

 discover just how often dynamiting would be necessary and 

 could be profitably done. 



According to a report compiled in the office of the State 

 Forester, June 1, only eighteen fires had been reported 

 by forest rangers this season. The total damage estimated 

 from these fires was $50. Most of them were in mea.dows, or 

 strips of land where no damage was done. None was serious 

 although several would have developed into bad fires if they 

 had not been promptly checked. Seven were set by locomo- 

 tives and most of the others were burnings that got beyond 

 control. While Minnesota has escaped, the fiercest forest 

 fires in years have been raging in the country north of the 

 Saskatchewan river to north of Prince Albert City, Canada. 

 The Hudson Bay railway survey camps have been destroyed. 

 Men lost all their outfits. Much valuable timber has been 

 burned. 



Continued wet weather made the recently created positions 

 of fire warden, of which there are four in the township of 

 Stuntz near Hibbing, something of a sinecure. The rangers 

 were reported as gathering brush and piling it in heaps to 

 be burned in dry weather lessening the danger from forest 

 fires. The present summer has been the wettest in the his- 

 tory of the range, according to the old timers. Water is 

 standing in the low spots all through the woods, the growth 

 of slough grass is the most dense in years and the levels of 



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