Canadian forestry Journal, October, igi6 



773 



Paper Association ,as well as the pow- 

 erful labor union of International 

 Woodworkers. 



A memorandum containing evidence 

 regarding the inadequacy of the Onta- 

 rio forest service, and the records of 

 up-to-date protective systems in other 

 provinces and the states of the Ameri- 

 can Union will be laid before the Cabi- 

 net, with suggestions for a plan of im- 



proved procedure which Ontario might 

 follow. 



"The Curse of the Forest." 



"The Curse of the Forest," a motion 

 picture of a real forest fire, showing- 

 methods of fighting and the destruc- 

 tion which follows in the wake of a 

 forest fire, have been completed In- the 

 A'itagraph Company in co-operation 

 with the Pennsylvania Department of 

 Forestry. 



Building a Telephone Line 



\- 



The Forestry Branch has planned to 

 extend the forest telephone system as 

 rapidly as proper experience and skill 

 are secured in the work and as funds 

 permit. Four meetings were held this 

 summer by the Branch for purposes of 

 instruction in certain phases of tele- 

 phone work, and were attended by 

 sixty rangers and supervisors of the 

 permanent field staff in Alberta and 

 Saskatchewan. Each meeting lasted 

 from six to eight days, and the entire 

 time was devoted to lectures on the 

 special types of telephone equipment 

 used on forest protection lines, and 

 to the practical work of line construc- 

 tion and operation of equipment. This 

 work was under the charge of Prof. W. 

 N. Millar, of Toronto University For- 

 est School, who, in addition to a theo- 

 retical knowledge of telephony has had 

 eight years of practical experience in 

 the construction of hundreds of miles 

 of forest telephone lines, beginning 

 with the first lines of this character 

 built by the United States Forest Ser- 

 vice in Northern Idaho in 1908. 



Special Construction. 



It is not, perhaps, generally realized 

 that the type of line construction 

 adapted to forest protection purposes 

 has, in the past five years, become very 

 thoroughly specialized and that it dif- 

 fers materially from the ordinary meth- 

 ods of rural and commercial construc- 

 tion. This specialization is rendered 



-ecessary by the fact that many forest 

 protection lines must, for reasons of 

 economy, be built through heavy tim- 

 ber without clearing the wide right-of- 

 way demanded in commercial construc- 

 tion. Of course, where a suitable 

 open right-of-way is available construc- 

 tion methods and specifications are 

 similar to those employed on ordinary 

 rural lines, but this is the exception 

 rather than the rule. 



Briefly decribed, forest protection 

 telephone systems consist of grounded 

 lines l)uilt of number 9 B.W.G. galvan- 

 ized iron wire hung on trees instead of 

 poles, and using a special split tree in- 

 sulator instead of the usual well-known 

 type of glass insulator employed on 

 poles. To prevent damage from fall- 

 ing timber and swa3nng trees, certain 

 rules of construction must be very 

 carefully observed. These provide 

 for a careful equalization of spans, for 

 the leaving of a very large amount of 

 slack, for the placing of ties on the con- 

 cave side of all curves, for the stagger- 

 ing of supports out of a straight line, 

 and for the employment of special 

 methods of attaching the insulators to 

 the trees so devised that when an ex- 

 cessive strain comes on the line wire, as 

 through the fall of a tree, the wire will 

 be detached from the support and car- 

 ried to the ground, but will not break. 

 The whole construction aims to pro- 

 duce a line that, while resisting all or- 

 dinarv strains, vields at once to exces- 



