140 



THE FORESTER. 



June 



ergy, and a decided loss of efficiency is 

 necessarily involved. As a leading New 

 York paper said recently: ''There is 

 fair reason to assume that Congress will 

 discover ere long that it has done only 

 half its duty in increasing appropriations, 

 and will follow this with new legislation 

 giving the Division not only more money, 

 but the authority which logically belongs 

 to it." This month one is much more 

 than ever before inclined to hope this may 

 prove true. 



Last Month's During the month of 

 Forest Fires. May the newspapers and 

 lumber journals have again been sadly 

 full of notices of forest fires in Min- 

 nesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. At the 

 beginning of the month an early and pro- 

 longed drouth in these states had dried up 

 everything, and had so reduced the streams 

 that many of the log drives were stranded. 

 Lumberyards, mills and settlements were 

 destroyed, and in many cases the unsawed 

 logs, held up on their way to the mills by 

 the shrinkage of the streams, were burned. 

 A correspondent of the American Lumber- 

 man wrote from Marinette, Wis., under 

 date of May loth " Logs in the river 

 were actually on fire last week. Mr. 

 Stephenson says that both banks of the 

 Menominee river for over a hundred miles 

 up and thirty miles inland were covered 

 with smoke and flames." " The losses of 

 Cedar stock, standing timber and property 

 will aggregate many hundred thousand 

 dollars." The tract here described is large 

 enough to embrace the whole of the White 

 Mountain region of New Hampshire, or 

 of the Adirondack region in New York, 

 and yet it is only one of many over which, 

 during this spring alone, similar fires have 

 been raging. The correspondent of the 

 American Ltimberman mentions the dis- 

 aster in his particular district briefly and 

 then passes on to other subjects. In a 

 short editorial the paper makes this com- 

 ment : " The proposed Minnesota National 

 Park was invaded by the forest fires in 

 that section of Minnesota and it has been 

 feared that irreparable damage might be 

 done to the Pine growing in it. If it were 



now a national forest reserve promj 

 measures would be taken to check th 

 spread of the flames." 



Public Indifference This quotation from th 

 to the Fires. American Lzimberman ii 

 on its face, merely one more argumer 

 for the Minnesota Park. Such the editc 

 probably intended it to be ; but si| 

 nificant in this regard as it is, it leac 

 the reader's thoughts into another char 

 nel also. If the land within the prc 

 posed boundaries of the park, "were noi 

 a National Forest Reserve prompt mea; 

 ures would be taken to check the sprea 

 of the flames," says the writer. One ca 

 but wonder again that it should be only i 

 the National Forest Reserves that mea: 

 ures for protection are to be expected, thz 

 the American public at large is so COIT 

 pletely indifferent to forest fires. It 

 easy to go off in explanation and to refe 

 to the warfare which our fathers, axe i 

 hand, had to cany on against the wildei 

 ness. But this does no good. The in 

 portant thing is the thing itself tha 

 strange though it may seem, this countr 

 prefers to see millions of dollars worth c 

 pi'operty go up in smoke year, after yea: 

 to protecting its forests from fire as it pr< 

 tects its farms from floods and its citi( 

 from conflagration. Crowds flock to sc 

 a burning house ; a burning forest passe 

 unnoticed. One eastern editorial-write 

 may remark that : "If the fiery lesson ir 

 volved in the loss of millions of dollai 

 worth of grown and growing timber sha 

 make no impression upon the public mine 

 and create no active interest in the enac 

 ment of measures intended to prevent sue 

 preventable destruction, the friends of fo: 

 estry might almost despair of their cause. 

 But in another column of the same issu 

 his paper is likely to devote but twent 

 lines to recording the destruction of foi 

 new towns, the loss of two score lives, an 

 the conversion of a green and flourishin 

 county into a charred waste. The ed 

 torial goes unread ; the public estimate c 

 forest fires is gauged by the brevity of th 

 inconspicuous news-item. 



What is to be done then ? The f r< 



