Forest Fires. 157 



628. Damages from prairie fires are best prevented by plowing 

 a few furrows in parallel lines, fifty or a hundred feet apart, and 

 burning off the grass between, soon after it is killed down by frost, 

 and before it is very dry. This practice along the sides of railroads 

 in a prairie region, is excellent. 



629. In Europe, fire-guards are made through the woods, by 

 clearing away all trees and all matter that can burn, in belts from fifty 

 to one hundred feet wide. To be effectual, they must be cleaned 

 out every year or two. If such belts were planted with deciduous 

 trees, that do not take fire so readily as conifers, they would afford 

 some protection, but not as much as the bare soil. 



630. Common roads answer the same end, and in a region liable 

 to fires, they should be wide and the sides well cleared. The French 

 Ordinance of Waters and Forests (1669), prescribed that public 

 roads through forests should be at least seventy-two feet wide, and 

 that all thorns and bushes within sixty feet should be cleared off 

 on each side. 



631. Avenues through a forest present the unavoidable disad- 

 vantage of exposing the timber to the winds. This effect is greatest 

 in heavy-topped hemlocks, etc., and least where the woodland has 

 grown up with the space reserved, as the branches of the trees on 

 the outside are then strong, and extend lower down, affording much 

 resistance to the wind. 



632. Where streams of water flow through nearly level wood- 

 lands, they mny sometimes be raised by dams, so as to form a series 

 of narrow ponds for long distances, that would check all ground- 

 fires. Stone walls, mounds of earth, and cactus-hedges afford some 

 protection. 



633. Our state laws should provide for the designation of some 

 existing officer, or the election of some special officer, who should 

 have authority to call out help for extinguishing forest fires. Such 

 men should be thoroughly familiar with their districts, and with all 

 lines of defense that can be used to oppose an advancing fire. Per- 

 sons when thus called upon, should be liable to a fine if they refuse 

 to assist without reasonable excuse. 



634. Laws rendering all persons responsible for the damages that 

 miy be done from fires that they set, whether carelessly or in- 

 tentionally, should be enacted and enforced. In Pennsylvania they 

 have a law rendering the counties responsible for the expenses in 



