EDITORIAL 



SPEAKERS of the American 

 Forestry Association will on 

 July 9 and 10 at Chautauqua, 

 New York, address some eight 

 or nine thousand teachers from every 

 State in the union, on the necessity for 

 proper care of the forests, for promot- 

 ing love of trees, for teaching the 

 value of the woodlands for recreational 

 purposes, and for widely diffusing the 



doctrine of forest conservation. This 

 is the kind of educational work which 

 meets with a most valuable response, 

 as each of the eight or nine thousand 

 will, in turn, speak to scores ; and in 

 hundreds of thousands of youthful 

 minds will be planted a seed of thought 

 which will develop, it is hoped, into an 

 appreciation of the value of trees for 

 their value to mankind. 



THIS is the time of year when 

 careful precautions against for- 

 est fires may be the means of 

 saving millions of dollars. 



The general public can aid materially 

 in this work by taking pains, when in 

 the woods, to quench their camp fires, 

 to avoid throwing lighted cigar and 

 cigarette stubs or burning matches on 

 the ground, and by putting out, if pos- 

 sible, or reporting quickly, any fires 

 which they may discover. 



It should be remembered that water 

 is not always necessary to extinguish 

 a fire. Fires may be beaten out with 

 sacks, coats, etc., or may be covered 

 with fresh earth and put out. 



Every boy and girl and every man 

 and woman while in or near the woods 

 should be a self -constituted fire war- 

 den. Carelessness is responsible for a 

 goodly percentage of the fires, and it 

 proper care is exercised and ordinary 

 precautions taken, it is not difficult to 

 make the fire losses small. Losses by 

 all causes except lightning are prac- 

 tically preventable. While the railroads 



are a chief cause of fires, the railroads 

 are doing much in the work of fire pre- 

 vention by equipping locomotives with 

 spark arresters, by using in heavil) 1 

 wooded districts oil burning locomo- 

 tives which do not eject sparks, by 

 clearing their right of w T ay for some 

 distance on each side of the tracks, by 

 patrolling sections where fires are 

 likely and by educating train crews to 

 look for, fight and report fires. 



In many sections farmers clear off 

 brush grown lots by setting fire to the 

 brush, and this should be done only 

 when the wind is from a safe direction, 

 and even then the fire should be care- 

 fully watched and all the flames should 

 be extinguished before night conies. 



Every country newspaper, in fact 

 every publication, can be of service, in 

 impressing people with the value of 

 wise precautions against forest fires. Do 

 not forget that forest fires cost an 

 average of seventy human lives, thou- 

 sands of animal lives and $25,000,000 

 in financial loss every year. 



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