148 REPORT OF ONTARIO GAME No. 52 



course, be advisable that every train should be followed at a reasonable 

 distance, but with gangs stationed at suitable distances and properly 

 organized and instructed, this should not present an insuperable diffi- 

 culty. The men would have to be furnished with a suitable equipment 

 of spades, axes and bucket's and these could be conveniently carried 

 on the handcars, for no great amount of equipment is needed success- 

 fully to cope with fire catches in their initial stages. 



An excellent illustration of the effectiveness of this plan is afforded 

 by the De Lotbiniere limits in the Province of Quebec. Through many 

 years the owners have caused every train during the dangerous 

 season to be followed at an interval of about half an hour 

 by a gang of men on a handcar provided with suitable equip- 

 ment, and the result has been that while innumerable catches have 

 been extinguished, the limit is Btill unburnt and under the* careful 

 and scientific direction of its proprietors is yielding a^ great a cut of 

 timber to-day, with the exception of pine, as it was fifty years ago. It 

 was recorded, indeed, by Mr. de Lotbiniere himself on one occasion as 

 an illustration of the advantages of the system that in following one 

 train through the comparatively short width of the limit, some 12 miles, 

 one gang extinguished no less than 9 catches and incipient fires caused 

 by its locomotive. When it is realized that each and every catch might 

 have developed into a conflagration which would have destroyed the 

 limit, it becomes apparent how intense is the danger to the forests from 

 railway cinders and sparks and hoAv vital and urgent is the necessity 

 for devising some means of coping with this evil. 



The expense of instituting fire patrols of this description along 

 the railways throughout the forest area of the Province would undoubt- 

 edly be great, but it cannot be questioned that if even one great forest 

 fire were thereby averted, it would not onlj^ be justified, but Imve paid 

 for itself many times over. It is plainly wrong that the railways should 

 be suffered to wreck and destroy millions of dollars' worth of public 

 property. The forests belong, indeed, to the Crown and are, therefore, 

 administered and cared for at the expense of the Province, but it would 

 be without the bounds of reason to expect the Province to undertake 

 expenditures to guard against the special risks to its property ensuant 

 on railway operations, seeing that these corporations, no more than 

 private individuals, have no right to cause injury to property which 

 does not belong to them. An Act of the Ontario Legislature authorizes 

 the placing of fire rangers along the railway lines and charging the ex- 

 pense of their maintenance to the companies concerned, and in 1909 

 the railways paid |66,712 on this account, chiefly^however, in connec- 

 tion with railways under construction, but it would seem that in so far 

 as the railways in operation are concerned a more effective system, on 

 the lines above indicated, is much to be desired, and although the opera- 

 tion of such a system would inevitably entail increased expenditures 

 when the gigantic sums involved in railway construction and operation 



