CANADIAN FOEESTEY ASSOCIATION. 35 



the forest tracts intact for the lumbering industry. In this way the prob- 

 lem of how to settle the vacant farms would soon be solved, and the great 

 lumbering industry would continue to remain a part of our industrial 

 wealth. 



Regardless, however, of how much precaution is exercised, fires will be 

 started, and to know what is the best way to combat them is, after all, the 

 final remedy. Nature provides most remedies for our ills, and often little 

 value is placed upon these remedies on account of their simplicity. It is 

 therefore possible that it may be hard for me to persuade some people 

 that the best implements with which to fight forest fires are the common 

 garden hoe and shovel. My experience, however, proves to me that there 

 is no way that this dreadful monster, forest fire, can be so successfully 

 fought as with those two everyday farm utensils just mentioned. Fire is a 

 hungry thing, and robbed of food, soon dies, but so long as it is fed on 

 the dry vegetable matter on top of the earth it will not cease its rapid de- 

 vouring until it licks up everything before it or is put out by a kindly rain. 

 To successfully cope with a fire, however, you must have something else be- 

 sides hoes and shovels. You must have men, willing men, men who are as 

 willing to rush to the protection of their neighbor's timber plot as if it were 

 his house that was on fire, instead of his trees. And they want to be at the 

 fire by daylight in the morning, for at this time of the day, the wind is not 

 blowing, and the fire has died down on account of the coolness and damp- 

 ness of the night just past. Now is the time when the "man with the hoe" 

 gets busy. Following along the outside rim or edge of the fire, with his hoe 

 or shovel he draws in or throws over into the portions that have already 

 been burned over, this smouldering edge. He takes care at the same time 

 to scrape back with it all moss or other dried material, so that the earth is 

 left bare for a foot or more in front of the fire which, so treated, soon 

 starves to death. 



To carry on the warfare against fire needs money and men, and while 

 it is no doubt the duty of the Province to assist in fire protection, as liberally 

 as the public funds will permit, yet it is well for the individual citizen to 

 remember that he has a duty to perform in this respect. For after all it is 

 the people of the immediate vicinity of the blackened waste who suffer 

 most; and the more property they can save the greater prosperity there is 

 in store for their locality in particular and the Province in general. The 

 following plan has been suggested as one that might be adopted to secure 

 help for the suppression of forest fires. Require all males between the 

 ages of 1 8 and 55 to be firemen, who would at the first appearance of 

 smoke within say two or three miles of their homes be expected to go to'the 

 place of the fire without delay or warning, and to remain there under the 

 charge of the Fire Warden of the district or his assistant until the fire was 

 either put out or abandoned. Remuneration for this service to be taken 

 out of a fund set apart for this purpose by the Government, but no re- 

 muneration to be allowed for the first two days' labour performed. This 

 labour to be considered the contribution of the citizen. 



Some of the benefits of this plan might be mentioned: (i) It would 

 have the effect of getting all the people interested in the fire regardless of 

 whose land was getting the scorching. (2) It places the duty on each man 



