110 



EEPOET OF THE 



No. 3 



district is chargeable to making life and property in general safe. Another phase 

 appears in connection with land under license; here the lumberman's timber must 

 be protected because he pays a fire tax, while the Crown is further interested in 

 the unmerchantable young growth on the limit. The third phase is to be found 

 in the immense area of cut-over land, largely reverted to the Crown. Protection 

 of this is necessary if we are to have any timber from which to derive revenue in 

 the future. In fact, expenditure on this account is more justifiable than for 

 unlicensed timber, because it is usually possible in case of fire damage to arrange 

 for logging the latter at once. Adequate protection of cut-over lands is expensive, 

 because they are acreages of the highest hazard owing to the logging slash. For 

 the same reason the fires are extremely hot and resulting damage to the young 

 trees is high. The only definite information that we have regarding the effect 

 of repeated forest fires upon the restocking of pine lands in Ontario is derived 

 from a report on a study, a few years ago, of 85,000 acres in the southern part 

 of the pinery. This study showed that the numbers of young pine trees one 

 inch and above in diameter surviving after fire were as, 110, 14, 7 and 3 trees per 

 acre, according as the area was burned severely, once, twice, three or many times. 

 These figures demonstrate the great damage done by fire to cut-over lands. As 

 already pointed out, some 485,000 acres of such lands were burned over this 

 season. Protection of this type of forest land is by far the cheapest method of 

 producing forests, even if general tree planting were within the financial ability 

 of the Province. 



Classification of Forest Fires, 1919. 



May 



June 



July 



August 



September. 



No. 

 36? 

 414 

 613 

 377 

 14 



1780 



Settlers 



Campers 



Railways 



Lightning 



Logging operations 

 Miscellaneous. . .. 

 Unknown 



\ ae. and under. . 



Over J to 5 ae. . . 



Over 5 to 10 ac . . 



Over 10 to 100 ac 



Over 100 to 500 ac 



Over 500 ac: 



500-1,000 



1,000 to 10,000 

 Over 10,000... 



% 



38.4 

 26.6 



5.4 

 11.6 



4.9 

 13.1 



100.0 



Railway Fires. — Of the fires occurring along railway lines, 659 fires werci 

 attributed to railway origin, either defective locomotives or employee carelessness. 

 This was 37 per cent, of the total number of fires reported for the season, a gratify- 

 ing improvement over the record for 1918 and 1917. But, as the table of loco- 

 motive inspections farther on shows, there is opportunity for better results yet, 

 since there is no reason why all companies cannot reach the standard of the best: 

 one in this respect. > 



