A vacation home among the pines. 



number 5,000 or more, well organized and with the experience 

 of three summers' work. 



There is no doubt in the minds of those who have best rea- 

 son to know, that the scouts have been of great use the past 

 three seasons, which will go down in the state's history as 

 the first since the advent of the lumbermen in which almost 

 complete immunity from disastrous conflagrations has been 

 enjoyed. The principal agency in keeping Michigan compara- 

 tively free from forest fires in 1912, 1913, 1914 has been the 

 forest scouts and their program of education for prevention 

 of fires. 



Over 900 small fires, any one of which might have developed 

 into a large one, were reported to the state and township fire 

 wardens by the scouts in 36 months, and 206 fires, at least 

 two of which were large enough to tax the ingenuity and 

 strength of experienced adult fire fighters, were extinguished, 

 with very little loss to property, by the same youngsters. 

 These figures do not include the handling of small and in- 

 cipient fires, which are a very great danger in the country 

 where slashings, brush piles and dead timber offer every op- 

 portunity for the quick spread of a conflagration once it gets 



11 



