DANGERS FROM FIRE 143 



officials were to comprise 4 inspectors of forest organ- 

 isation, 15 head-taxators, 45 under- taxators, and 

 106 surveyors. 



With the above quite inadequate staff, even when 

 supplemented by two to three thousand extra guards 

 and fire patrols, the latter being, by the way, unpaid, 

 it is not surprising that the protection it is possible 

 to give the forests is very inefficient, and that one of 

 the greatest dangers to which they are subject is fire. 

 On the subject of fire, and the appalHng damage it 

 causes in forest lands, the people are apparently quite 

 ignorant, and wilful incendiarism is as common as 

 used to be the case, and still is in parts, in India. 

 The points of greatest danger, the dry areas, are 

 exactly those in which the forests have the greatest 

 local value, because so scarce ; e.g. in the Steppe 

 region and parts of Turkestan and in some districts 

 of the Tobolsk and Tomsk Governments a scarcity of 

 wood is already being felt by the local population. 

 The chief causes of fires are the burning of the dry 

 grass in the hot season in order to get up an earlier 

 crop of new young grass for grazing purposes with 

 the arrival of the first rains. The fires are allowed 

 to *' run," that is, no effort is made to restrain them, 

 and they spread into the neighbouring forests ; the 

 drier and more windy the weather, the greater the 

 area of the latter consumed. Camp fires made by 

 travellers and left alight after their departure are 

 also a fruitful source of forest fires. Indian forest 

 officers are well acquainted with this form of forest 

 devastation, which was of annual occurrence throughout 

 the afforested areas in India in olden times. A forest 



