402 FORESTRY IN NEW ENGLAND 



do not often succeed in getting all owners, large and small, to 

 join. They are, therefore, often compelled to protect lands of 

 non-members, owing to the danger of fires spreading from these 

 lands to lands of members. Another advantage of the Maine 

 system is that there is no large force of regular patrolmen, but, 

 instead, a big force of wardens always available, who can be 

 called out to patrol at short notice, and kept at work only as 

 long as actually needed. This gives great elasticity to the patrol 

 system, and works for economy. 



In the organized towns of Maine, the selectmen act as fire 

 wardens. One provision, which is peculiar to Maine, permits 

 any person whose property has been injured by a forest fire to 

 collect damages from the town in which the injury was caused, 

 provided the injury was caused "in consequence of the negli- 

 gence or neglect of the selectmen in performing the duties 

 required by the law." 



Educational Work. 



C. — The State University at Orono was one of the first in the 

 country to offer instruction in forestry, establishing a course in 

 1903. It has developed a four-years' under-graduate course in 

 forestry, somewhat similar to that of Pennsylvania State Col- 

 lege, with the purpose of developing trained foresters in four 

 years instead of six as at graduate schools. The professor of 

 forestry has done some extension work among the farmers' 

 organizations of the state, but no definite policy of propaganda 

 has yet been estabhshed. There is in the state a forestry 

 association. 



State Forests. 



D. — Maine has no state forests in the sense of the newly ac- 

 quired forests of Vermont, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, or of 

 the forest reservations of New York and Wisconsin. Most of 

 the immense forest territory, once owned by the state, or by 

 Massachusetts before Maine came into the Union as a sep- 

 arate state, has been disposed of, some to pay off soldiers of 

 the early wars, some to educational institutions, but much of it 



