FOREST FIRES. 123 



are friction and lightning, both of which occasionally start fires 

 in dead trees, but as such fires are most likely to be set during 

 a rain they seldom do much damage. Practically all the in- 

 jurious forest fires that have devastated the forested part of 

 this section have resulted indirectly either from a lack of ap- 

 preciation of the damage done by them or from carelessness 

 and ignorance. In the disastrous Hinckley fire of 1894 the 

 damage was done by a large fire formed by the combination 

 of several small fires that were allowed to smoulder in the 

 swamps near Hinckley for a week or more, which when fanned 

 by a dry hot wind attained an irresistible energy. If we had 

 had a fire law that could have been properly enforced at that 

 time, or if the people near Hinckley had been aware of their 

 danger, that great fire, with its attendant great loss of life 

 and property, need not have occurred. 



Fires often escape from settlers when they are clearing 

 land and are sometimes started by them to make pasture for 

 their stock. The careless use of fire by the hunters, pros- 

 pectors and others who camp in the forest and leave their 

 camp fires unextinguished is another common cause of fires. 

 Railroads set many fires and should be required to more 

 rigidly conform to the law requiring them to use spark arrest- 

 ers and to keep their right of way free from combustible 

 material. 



The moral effect of a properly enforced forest fire law is 

 not only very great in restraining the careless, but especially 

 in educating law-abiding citizens in the idea that there is 

 value in young seedlings and timber trees. 



The Prevention of Forest Fires will be most certainly accom- 

 plished by educating our people to an appreciation of the 

 amount of damage done by them. In some counties in this 

 state it is impossible to enforce the law against setting forest 

 fires owing to the belief that fires are a good thing for their 

 sections in destroying tree growth and bringing the land into 

 condition to be easily taken up by settlers. There is some 

 truth in this claim, but since the fires destroy all increase on 

 the land they sweep over, a large amount of it is thereby ren- 

 dered entirely unproductive long before settlers are ready for 

 it, while in the meantime it might be producing a crop of 

 valuable timber. Then again, it is the greatest, injustice to 



