being denuded more rapidly than before the service was es- 

 tablishd." 



Preliminary steps have been taken by State Auditor Iver- 

 scn and Attorney General Smith toward making claims 

 against all railroads in the state for damages which have 

 accrued to lands burned over by forest fires started by loco- 

 motives. 



It is the intention to obtain information as to the loss re- 

 sulting from each fire and to call upon the roads to make set- 

 tlement. 



The first report received this morning covers a loss esti- 

 mated by Andrew Miles, timber cruiser, at $540 for a fire 

 near Corona, Minn., during June, 1910. This fire, the report 

 said, destroyed all timber on the land and killed the top soil. 



Game Warden George Wood, while on a trip into the Peli 

 can lake country north of Virginia on the trail of game law 

 violators, came across a family evidently of Syrian birth, 

 composed of the father and mother and five children, living 

 together in a little hut of single room, says a Duluth news- 

 paper. The children were running about entirely naked and 

 the mother robed in nothing more than a gauze vest. The 

 father, who appeared to have enthroned himself as the liege 

 lord of this little band of savages, wore a pair of filthy over- 

 alls and was reclining in the shade of a tree while the woman 

 and children were cleaning fish and preparing a meal. 



In the little niche in the woods where the house was stand 

 ing was a small garden and from this, with what game the 

 man procured, had furnished the family subsistence, so the 

 father said, for months. 



The children, the eldest of whom was about 15, had never 

 been to school, could not speak a word of English and were 

 more like wild animals than human beings. The game war- 

 den confiscated some nets that he found on the premises, but 

 not having the authority to interfere with the family's man- 

 ner of living, left them as he found them in their miserable 

 surroundings. 



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