PROTECTION 143 



acre squares. The problem, therefore, that con- 

 fronts the lookout man upon the discovery of a 

 forest fire is to inform the Ranger or other Forest 

 officer where the fire is that is, in what section it is 

 located, if it cannot be located with reference to 

 some well-known natural feature. 



In order to determine in what section or quarter 

 section a fire is located, each lookout point on the 

 Supervisor's and Rangers' fire maps has a trans- 

 parent circular protractor mounted on it. (A pro- 

 tractor is a device by which angles are marked off; 

 it consists of a circle upon whose arc the degrees 

 from to 360 are indicated, degrees being equiv- 

 alent to North, 90 to East, 180 to South and 270 

 to West.) The center of the protractor is the 

 lookout point. A piece of black thread is fastened 

 to the center of each lookout point, so that it can be 

 stretched across the arc of the circle and the de- 

 grees read off. The other end of the thread has 

 fastened to it a thumb tack or similar device, so that 

 when the thread is stretched to read a certain angle, 

 it can be fixed at that angle. The maps of the 

 lookout men are usually fastened or permanently 

 mounted upon a table which is oriented (that is, the 

 top of the map is turned toward the north). The 



